Name: Buttered Lobster
Ingredients: Lobster; Butter

Why it works: Lobster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Buttered Lobster

Ingredients

Lobster
Butter

Directions

Prepare the lobster

Boil the lobster until cooked through.
Remove the meat from the shell and cut it into pieces.

Cook and serve

Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.
Add the lobster pieces to the pan and sauté until heated through.
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.

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 protein, which sets firm and tender when cooked through.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the lobster stay moist as it heats.

“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.