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Creamed Lobster

A creamy lobster dish made with milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the melted butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the salt, white pepper, and lemon juice to the butter-flour mixture.

  4. Gradually stir in a little hot milk, then pour in the rest of the milk.

Cook and add lobster

  1. Cook the mixture slowly for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add the lobster and heat for an additional 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Lobster
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and coats the flour to help it blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce when cooked slowly.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually to the butter-flour mixture. Adding a little hot milk at first and stirring until smooth keeps the flour from clumping. Pouring all the liquid in at once can leave lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lobster, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lobster, butter, flour, lemon. 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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