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Buttered Lobster

A lobster dish baked with butter, lemon, mustard, cayenne, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Buttered 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 lobster

  1. If using canned lobster, open it and empty it into a bowl an hour before using.

  2. Mince the lobster evenly.

Make the lobster mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, butter, and seasoning. Heat until it simmers.

  2. Add the lobster and half of the cracker crumbs to the saucepan. Cook slowly, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill small baking dishes or scallop shells with the lobster mixture. Top each with a bit of butter and cover with remaining cracker crumbs.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot in the shells with sliced lemon and crackers.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main protein and the body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the filling stay tender when heated.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the buttery liquid to thicken the mixture and form a golden crust on top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and sweet lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, covered, over gentle heat. Lobster proteins toughen and turn rubbery when cooked too fast or too long. Gentle, covered cooking keeps the meat moist and tender while the crumbs soak up the butter and lemon.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, lemon, 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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