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Deviled Lobster

A lobster dish with mustard, cayenne pepper, sugar, and bread crumbs baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled 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

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled lobster and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with mustard, cayenne pepper, and sugar to form a paste.

Fill and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into scallop shells.

  2. Dust bread crumbs over the top of the lobster mixture.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

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

  2. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 body and flavour of the filling, binding with the mustard into a paste.
Mustard
Adds a sharp tang that cuts the richness of the lobster.
Sugar
Balances the sharp and spicy notes and helps the top brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping while the filling stays moist underneath.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that sharpens the lobster's sweet flavour.

The step that matters

Bake only until the top is browned. The lobster is already cooked, so extra heat toughens and dries the meat. Sugar and bread crumbs brown quickly, so watch the top closely and stop once it is golden.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Lettucefits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, sugar, bread. 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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