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Creamed Lobster

A creamy lobster dish with onion, butter, flour, cream, ketchup, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, and cheese topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, simmer the minced onion in butter until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the cream, baking soda, ketchup, Tabasco, and Worcestershire sauce; mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the chopped lobster and pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Top with grated cheese and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and texture, staying in pieces within the creamy sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce that clings to the lobster.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, forming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds fat for a rich base.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top during baking, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the sauce, which can help browning in the baked top.

The step that matters

Thicken the cream with the flour. Cooking the flour briefly in the butter before adding cream lets it thicken evenly. Adding cream too quickly or skipping the cooking can leave lumps or a thin sauce that does not hold the lobster well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, ketchup, sauce, lobster, cheese):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, ketchup, sauce, lobster, cheese. 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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