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Deviled Lobster

Deviled lobster is a dish of boiled lobster meat mixed with mustard, cayenne, salt, table sauce, and butter, served with a coral sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Deviled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove all the meat from the boiled lobster, reserving the coral.

  2. Season the lobster meat with mustard, cayenne, salt, and table sauce.

Make the coral dressing

  1. Rub the coral smooth, adding vinegar until it is thin enough to pour easily.

  2. Prepare the dressing before heating the lobster meat, ensuring it boils only once before adding the coral.

Cook and finish

  1. Stew the mixture in a covered saucepan with just enough hot water to prevent burning.

  2. Stir the coral mixture into the saucepan.

  3. Stir in the butter, and when it boils again, remove from heat immediately to avoid toughening the meat.

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 + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 body of the dish, becoming tender when gently stewed rather than boiled hard.
Coral (in the method)
Adds rich, savoury flavour and a deep colour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the lobster and coral.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and thins the coral so it pours easily into the mixture.

The step that matters

Removing the pan from the heat after the final boil. Lobster meat is delicate; prolonged or repeated boiling makes proteins contract and toughen it, so the mixture should be taken off the heat as soon as the butter has come back to a boil.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, sauce, vinegar, butter):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, sauce, vinegar, butter. 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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