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Lobster Au Gratin

A lobster dish baked with sauce, cayenne, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Split the lobster and remove all the meat.

  2. Cut the meat into dice-sized pieces.

  3. Mix the lobster meat with the coral, cream, and inside of the lobster.

  4. Add the Downton Sauce and a little cayenne pepper.

  5. Heat the mixture in a saucepan.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the body shells of three small lobsters cut in half with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs over each shell.

  3. Dot with butter to prevent burning.

  4. Place in a Dutch oven before the fire for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 filling and gives the dish its meaty texture and flavour.
Downton sauce
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that binds the lobster meat into a spoonable filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the heat, contrasting with the soft filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb topping brown evenly.

The step that matters

Baking the filled shells. Five minutes before the fire is brief. The crumb topping needs enough heat to turn golden, but longer or fiercer heat toughens lobster meat and dries out the filling.

“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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