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Lobster Farci

A baked dish of lobster meat mixed with cream, butter, mushrooms, and herbs, stuffed into lobster shells and topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Farci

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 filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cream or milk, mushrooms, parsley, cayenne, and chives.

  3. Mix in the chopped lobster meat.

  4. Beat thoroughly until combined.

  5. Heat the sauce before adding the lobster.

Fill and bake

  1. Cut the lobster shell into small pieces.

  2. Butter the pieces.

  3. Fill the shells with the lobster mixture.

  4. Top the shells with butter.

  5. Sprinkle the shells with bread crumbs.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

Serve

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

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

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of boiled lobster
Forms the main filling, providing the dish's flavor and substance.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat and a sharp, aromatic note to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The lobster is already cooked, so it only needs to heat through. Overbaking toughens the meat and dries the filling, while the topping should brown without it.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, cream, butter, mushroom, parsley, pepper. 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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