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Boiled Lobster

A boiled lobster served cold with mustard, hard‑boiled eggs, cayenne pepper, salt, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the lobsters

  1. Boil a pot of water with a generous amount of coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the lobsters to the boiling water and cook for 30 minutes, or longer for very large lobsters.

  3. Remove the lobsters from the pot and let them drain.

Prepare and serve

  1. Carefully open the lobsters and extract the meat.

  2. Serve the lobster cold with mustard, hard-boiled eggs, cayenne pepper, salt, vinegar, and oil.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lobster + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together692 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, which is cooked by boiling in salted water until opaque.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the boiling water so the lobster meat is lightly flavoured as it cooks.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture alongside the lobster.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and cuts through the oil.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour across the cold lobster meat.

The step that matters

Cooking time for the lobsters. Lobster is easily overcooked, which makes the meat tough and rubbery. Very large lobsters need longer to cook through, so the timing must follow their size.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, vinegar. 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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