Name: Creamed Lobster
Ingredients: 1 pint lobster meat, cut fine; 1 pint cream sauce; Lemon, to taste; Toast, for serving; Lettuce leaves, for garnish; Lemon slices, for garnish

Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster

Prepare a cream sauce as you would for fish.
Heat the lobster meat in the cream sauce.
Season with lemon to taste.

Serve

Serve the mixture on toast.
Garnish with lettuce leaves and slices of lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat: Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour that the dish is built around.
Cream sauce: Carries the lobster and adds richness and a smooth, moist texture.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, cream, sauce, lettuce):

Avocadofits better
Coconutfits better
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, cream, sauce, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.