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Creamed Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in a butter, milk, and flour sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until blended.

  3. Add the milk and stir until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the finely cut meat of the previously boiled lobster.

  2. Heat well, season with salt, pepper, and paprika, and serve.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot milk mixture.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that becomes the sauce.
Lobster
Provides the main flavor and tender, sweet meat for the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the butter and flour. Stir the milk in gradually and keep stirring so the flour disperses evenly. This lets the starch thicken the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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.

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