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Scalloped Lobster

A baked lobster dish layered with bread crumbs, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scalloped Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Layer the lobster meat in the dish without cutting it.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Add a layer of bread crumbs and lumps of butter.

  5. Repeat with another layer of lobster and finish with bread crumbs on top.

  6. Pour the cream or milk over the layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes and serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its rich, sweet seafood flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the cream and butter, giving the layers body and a soft, set texture.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the crumbs and promotes golden browning on top.
Cream or milk
Provides liquid that moistens the crumbs and sets into a custard as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and cream.

The step that matters

Pour the cream or milk over the layers. The liquid must soak through the crumbs and lobster evenly; if it pools or the layers are packed unevenly, parts may stay wet while others dry out during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

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