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Deviled Lobster

A baked lobster dish with flour, butter, mustard, milk, onion, breadcrumbs, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat together flour, butter, cayenne, and salt in a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Stir the mixture into boiling milk.

  2. Add the chopped lobster.

  3. Cook for 2 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish.

  2. Cover with breadcrumbs.

  3. Brown in the oven.

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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce as its starch cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Milk
Serves as the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into boiling milk. Flour starch must be dispersed evenly as it hits the hot liquid. Stirring prevents lumps and lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce uniformly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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