Skip to main content
Dessert

Lobster

A steamed lobster pudding made with lobster meat, eggs, spices, and ham-lined pudding basin, served with lobster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster mixture

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and pound it in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, pepper, salt, and pounded mace.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg froth gently.

Cook and serve

  1. Line a pudding basin with ham slices and pour in the lobster mixture.

  2. Cover the top with a cloth and place the basin in a saucepan with hot water, ensuring the water does not overflow.

  3. Boil for 1 hour and 20 minutes.

  4. Turn the cooked mixture onto a hot dish, remove the ham, and pour Lobster sauce around it before serving.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lobster + hamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Ham + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lobsters
Provide the main flavour and the solid body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the mixture when cooked, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg froth gently. Whipped egg foam holds the lightness of the pudding through air bubbles. Vigorous stirring knocks out that air, leaving a denser, heavier result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, pepper, ham, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, ham, sauce. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes