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Lobster Creamed

A creamy lobster dish cooked with butter, flour, milk, lemon juice, and cream, served with buttered brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the claws and body of the lobster and chop it into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook briefly without browning.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring continuously until it comes to a boil.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the chopped lobster meat and let it simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and cream.

  3. Reheat without boiling.

  4. Serve the dish with thinly cut buttered brown bread.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 and sweet, delicate flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and carries the flour for the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked briefly with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Cream
Adds extra richness and smoothness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Reheat without boiling. Boiling a dairy sauce after adding cream can cause it to curdle or separate, so it should only be warmed through gently.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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