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Buttered Lobster

A lobster dish with butter, vinegar or lemon, cayenne, mustard, served on lettuce with hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Buttered Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the meat from the boiled lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Sift the coral over the lobster meat.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix in the liver, vinegar or lemon juice, butter, cayenne pepper, and made mustard.

  2. Heat the mixture in a pan until thoroughly hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on cup-shaped leaves of lettuce with a quarter of a hard-boiled egg on top of each portion.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 and delicate sweet flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the warm mixture a smooth, rounded texture.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sweetness of the lobster.
Lobster coral
Contributes concentrated lobster flavour and a rich, colourful texture when sifted in.
Lobster liver
Adds deep, savoury richness and a creamy body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture until thoroughly hot. Heating the butter and liver mixture until it is fully hot cooks the liver and warms the mixture evenly, so it is safe to eat and blends smoothly. Overheating can cause the butter to separate and the lobster to toughen.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, liver, vinegar, butter, pepper, mustard. 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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