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Lobster Au Gratin for Those Who Do Not Like Curry

A baked lobster dish with a creamy sauce and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Lobster Au Gratin for Those Who Do Not Like Curry

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter and fry onion until light brown.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Pour in milk and season with salt, pepper, cayenne, sugar, nutmeg, and parsley; boil until thick.

  4. Add lobster meat and bring to a boil again.

  5. Remove from heat and quickly mix in egg.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill lobster shells with mixture.

  2. Top with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes until browned.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that cooks the onion and forms the base of the roux for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Lobster meat
Main protein, adding flavor and tender texture to the sauce.
Egg
Stirred in off the heat to enrich the sauce and add body.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping during baking.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and quickly mix in egg. If the sauce is too hot when the egg goes in, the egg can scramble into small lumps instead of blending smoothly and thickening the sauce gently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, sugar, nutmeg, parsley. 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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