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Lobster Farce

A creamy lobster filling baked with butter, breadcrumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Farce

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a double boiler.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour, cayenne pepper, mace, and salt.

  3. Stir this mixture into the hot cream and let it come to a boil.

Fill and bake

  1. Combine the cream mixture with the lobster pieces.

  2. Fill the lobster shells with the mixture, top with bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  3. Brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and serve hot.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cream
Forms the rich, smooth base that binds the lobster into a creamy filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with the flour forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that holds the lobster together.
Lobster
Provides the main meat and flavor of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned topping in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the hot cream and bring it to a boil. Flour thickens only when it is cooked in hot liquid long enough for its starch to swell. Stirring prevents lumps, and a full boil gives the sauce the body needed to bind the lobster.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper, lobster, 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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