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Deviled Lobster

Deviled Lobster is a lobster dish seasoned with salt, mustard, curry, pepper, and oil, then broiled and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and mustard work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 394 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Deviled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the tails from the lobsters and split them in half.

  2. Make several crosswise incisions in the lobster meat.

Season and broil

  1. In a bowl, mix salt, dry mustard, curry powder, white pepper, and oil.

  2. Spread the mixture over the lobsters.

  3. Broil the lobsters until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Return the lobsters to their shells, which should be kept hot.

  2. Pour a little melted butter over the lobsters and serve.

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 + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Mustard + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main protein, which turns firm and opaque as it cooks through.
Oil
Carries the spices over the lobster meat and helps them coat evenly.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished lobster.

The step that matters

Broil the lobsters until cooked through. Lobster meat turns rubbery when overcooked, and it dries out quickly under a broiler. Watching closely and stopping once the meat turns opaque keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, mustard, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, mustard, 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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