Skip to main content
Main

Escalloped Lobster

Escalloped Lobster is a lobster dish cooked in a milk, butter, flour sauce and baked with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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).

  2. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, butter, and seasonings.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir the mixture into the heated milk and boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the lobster meat and mix well.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a baking dish, top with bread crumbs, and bake for 10 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the lobster together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form the roux that thickens the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Forms a topping that browns in the oven, adding crunch and color.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the heated milk and boil for 2 minutes. Adding the flour and butter mixture to hot milk without lumps and boiling it briefly lets the starch fully thicken the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes