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Creamed Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in a creamy sauce of milk, cream, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk and cream until boiling.

  2. Mix the corn-starch with a little milk until smooth, then stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Once the milk thickens, remove from heat and stir in the lobster.

  4. Do not boil after adding the lobster.

Season

  1. Season with salt, white pepper, and cayenne to taste.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat and body of the creamed dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the starch thickens.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the dish.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the lobster. Boiling toughens the delicate protein in lobster meat, making it rubbery, and can cause the thickened cream sauce to break or curdle.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, butter, cream, milk, corn, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, cream, milk, corn, pepper. 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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