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Boiled Lobster

A lobster boiled in salted water, then served with butter or sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Boiled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a pot with 1 quart of water and add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

Boil the lobster

  1. Add the lobster and boil briskly for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on its size.

  2. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the shell of the lobster with a little butter or sweet oil.

  2. Break off the claws and crack them carefully at each joint.

  3. Cut the tail down the middle and serve the body whole.

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 + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Is the main ingredient, providing the meat that the dish is built around.
Butter or sweet oil
Adds fat and a little richness to the shell as it is rubbed on.

The step that matters

Boiling the lobster. Boiling briskly for the right time matters because undercooked lobster meat stays translucent and tough, while overcooked meat becomes rubbery and dry. Size determines the time, so the timing should be judged by the lobster's weight.

“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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