Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Lobster

A lobster dish baked with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce, seasoned, topped with breadcrumbs, and finished in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Scalloped Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into pieces ¼ inch thick.

  2. Make a thick white sauce by melting the butter, adding the flour, and whisking in the hot milk.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  4. Mix the lobster pieces with the sauce and place them back into the lobster shells.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the lobster with buttered breadcrumbs and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Garnish with the claws and parsley before serving.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

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

Lobster
Provides the main protein, whose tender meat forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds richness and flavor to the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable white sauce that binds the lobster pieces.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Buttered breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the white sauce. Flour must be cooked smoothly into melted butter and the hot milk whisked in gradually so lumps do not form. Stirring keeps starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens evenly and binds the lobster rather than turning grainy.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes