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Escalloped Lobster

A lobster dish baked in shells with a cracker‑butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Escalloped Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped lobster, powdered crackers, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add milk gradually until the mixture is soft.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into scallop shells.

  2. Bake for a few minutes until golden brown.

  3. Serve in the shells garnished with parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavor and the body of the dish.
Powdered crackers
Bind the mixture and absorb moisture to form a soft, spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so the mixture becomes soft and cohesive.

The step that matters

Bake for a few minutes until golden brown. Baking is brief, so the top can go from pale to over-browned quickly. Watching for golden color matters because the butter and crumbs brown through Maillard reactions, which build flavor, while overbaking dries the lobster and hardens the crumbs.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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