Name: Lobster Pie
Ingredients: 2 large lobsters or 3 small lobsters; 2-3 tablespoons vinegar; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; pounded mace to taste; 1 piece of butter; flour for rolling; bread crumbs for topping; puff pastry for covering

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Boil the lobsters, remove the tails, and cut them in half.
Take out the gut and divide each tail into four pieces.
Place the lobster pieces in a small dish along with the claw meat and picked body meat.
Clear the body meat of any furry parts and beat the spawn in a mortar.
Crush the shells and stew them with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and pounded mace.
Add a piece of butter rolled in flour to the stew.
Once the goodness is extracted, boil the mixture and strain it into the dish.
Sprinkle bread crumbs over the mixture and cover it with puff pastry.
Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the crust is done.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread):

Tarragonfits better
Parsleyfits better
Capersfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.