Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Creams

A lobster and cream mixture served in small souffle cases, seasoned with lemon, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Creams

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster and pound it with the butter in a mortar.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Pound the carapace separately and sieve it, then dry it slightly in a cool oven (300°F/150°C).

Make the cream and fill

  1. Whip the cream, adding lemon juice drop by drop until stiff, but do not over-beat.

  2. Fold in the lobster mixture and half of the carapace, then season with cayenne and salt.

  3. Spoon the lobster cream into small souffle cases and decorate with the remaining carapace.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the delicate pink-tinted body of the cream.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness, helping the pounded lobster become a silky paste.
Cream
Whipped to form the airy structure that gives the mousse-like texture.
Lemon juice
Added drop by drop to the cream to brighten flavour and help it stabilise while whipping.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff, but do not over-beat. Cream whips by trapping air in fat-protein films. Stopping at stiff peaks keeps the cream smooth and pliable; over-beating causes it to separate and turn grainy, so it will not fold smoothly into the lobster mixture.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes