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Lobster Pie

A savory pie with lobster, butter sauce, breadcrumbs, and garnishes of egg and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the lobster in a colander.

  2. Place the lobster in a pie dish and season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add flour, then gradually stir in the milk.

  2. Cook the mixture well and flavor with tarragon vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lobster, scatter breadcrumbs on top, and bake until lightly browned.

  2. Garnish with chopped hard boiled egg and parsley, then serve hot.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the body of the pie and supplies the main sweet, delicate flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and the lobster.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden top through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce well. Cooking the butter, flour, and milk mixture fully thickens it and cooks out the raw starch taste. An undercooked sauce stays thin and floury-tasting.

“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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