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To Dress a Lobster

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Dress a Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the lobster flesh very fine.

  2. Add gravy, chopped shallots, parsley, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Stew the mixture in a pan.

  4. Place the mixture into the lobster shells.

  5. Top with bread crumbs and clarified butter.

  6. Brown under a salamander or broiler.

  7. Cut the body shells in half and use the two half-shells of the tail.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, parsley, pepper, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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