Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Lobster Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Make the butter
Remove the carapace from the lobsters and pound it into a smooth paste.
Mix in ⅓ cup of fresh butter and spices to taste.
Blend the mixture thoroughly and set it aside in a cool place.
Serve
Form the mixture into small pats and serve with curled parsley around the dish.
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.
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,609 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Lobster + parsleytop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together890 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobsters
- Provide the main flavour and the shell-based paste that gives the butter its colour and taste.
- Fresh butter
- Carries the lobster flavour and gives the mixture a rich, spreadable texture.
The step that matters
Pounding the carapace into a smooth paste. Shell fragments left in the paste make the butter gritty, and a coarse paste blends less evenly with the butter. Pounding it fine lets the flavour spread through the whole mixture.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter. 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.
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