Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Lobster

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

Layer

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

  2. Sprinkle with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little lemon juice.

  3. Add a layer of fine bread crumbs and lumps of butter.

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

  5. Pour 1 pint of 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 provides its flavour and protein structure when baked.
Cream or milk
Supplies moisture and richness, setting softly as the dish bakes.
Fine bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and add a light, toasted texture on top.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pour the cream or milk over the layers before baking. The liquid must reach down through the layers so the bread crumbs can soak it up and the dish sets evenly rather than drying out at the top.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipes