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Stewed Lobster

A lobster stew made with milk, mace, flour, tomalley, mustard, butter, vinegar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stewed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Break the shell of the lobster and remove the vein from the back.

  2. Set the spawn aside in a cup.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat 1 pint of milk with a pinch of mace until boiling.

  2. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with the tomalley and add to the boiling milk along with 1/2 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a little mustard, and the walnut-sized butter.

  3. Cut the lobster into pieces and add to the hot sauce for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, stir in 1 teaspoon of vinegar and garnish with lobster claws.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 meat and flavor of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and tomalley to the boiling milk. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump if not first blended smoothly with the tomalley and added gradually. Stirring well keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, milk, flour, mustard, walnut, butter, vinegar. 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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