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Lobster, Crab, Crayfish, Oysters

Lobster boiled in salted water, served with optional tomato sauce or butter, or mixed with spinach to form cakes.

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, Crab, Crayfish, Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and shell

  1. Boil the lobster in salted water until cooked through.

  2. Remove the meat from the shell.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato sauce or butter, if desired.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with spinach and form into cakes.

  3. Prepare lobster guenelles with your choice of sauce.

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. Tomato + spinachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Spinach
Adds color and leafy flavor, and moisture that the cakes must bind around.

The step that matters

Boil the lobster until cooked through. Lobster proteins tighten as they heat, so overcooking makes the meat rubbery and dry, while undercooking leaves it unsafe to eat.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, sauce, butter, spinach):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, butter, spinach. 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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