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Buttered Lobsters

A lobster dish baked with butter, ham essence, cream, and seasonings, served in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Buttered Lobsters

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.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters until half done.

  2. Remove the tails and cut the bodies in half. Pick out the meat and leave the shells whole.

  3. Break the tails and claws, then cut the meat very small.

Make the filling

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the lobster meat, essence of ham, butter, consomme, cream, beaten mace, shallot, parsley, and bread crumbs. Mix over low heat for five minutes.

  2. Season with Cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the reserved shells with the mixture and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for twenty minutes.

  3. Before serving, brown the crumbs with a salamander.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Lobsters
Provide the sweet, tender meat that forms the body of the dish.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the filling.
Consomme
Adds savoury meaty depth and liquid to bind the filling.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the filling and form a crisp, browned topping.
Essence of ham
Adds concentrated savoury, smoky flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Brown the crumbs with a salamander. The topping browns quickly under intense direct heat, so it can scorch or dry out if left too long. Watch it closely and stop once golden, since the filling beneath is already cooked and should stay moist.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, ham, butter, cream, shallot, parsley, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, ham, butter, cream, shallot, parsley, bread. 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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