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Canned Lobster

A creamy lobster dish made with canned lobster, butter, flour, cream, stock, egg yolk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Canned Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster meat into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in the cream and stock, and cook until it boils.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster, salt, and pepper, and heat thoroughly.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk and chopped parsley.

  3. Serve in paper cases or individual dishes.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and starts the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If the sauce is still boiling when it is added, the yolk can scramble into small lumps. Removing the pan from heat first lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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