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Devilled Lobster

A lobster dish flavored with butter, curry powder, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Devilled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a hot pan.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of curry powder, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and salt in a bowl to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the melted butter and cook until it bubbles.

  4. Stir in the lobster meat and cook for 2 minutes.

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 + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its sweet, delicate flavor.
Butter
Fat that carries the spices and gives the sauce richness and a smooth texture.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the dish.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp tang and helps bind the paste together.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and a tangy, umami note.

The step that matters

Stir in the lobster meat and cook for 2 minutes. The lobster is already cooked, so it only needs to warm through. Overheating causes its proteins to tighten, leaving the meat dry and rubbery, so keep the heat gentle and the time short.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Onionfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, sauce. 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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