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Stewed Lobster

A lobster meat stew thickened with milk and cornstarch, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a small frying pan, combine the chopped lobster meat and enough milk to nearly cover it.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a little cornstarch mixed with milk.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the stew on toasted bread placed on a hot platter.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

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

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 protein and sweet flavour that the stew is built around.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and gives the stew its creamy body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk as its starch granules swell, giving the stew a smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savoury fat flavour at the seasoning stage.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold milk before adding it, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only when the liquid is hot, as its starch granules swell and set.

“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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