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Lobster Pie

A savory pie made with lobster meat, shells, and a butter‑flour base, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the tails.

  3. Cut the lobsters in half.

  4. Remove the gut.

  5. Cut each tail into four pieces.

  6. Pick the meat from the claws and body.

  7. Discard the furry parts and lady spawn.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the shells with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and mace in a pot.

  2. Stew the mixture to extract flavor.

  3. Add butter rolled in flour to the pot.

  4. Boil for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture into a dish.

  6. Add bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Cover with pastry.

  2. Bake slowly until the pastry 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.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid when cooked with the butter.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body.

The step that matters

Add butter rolled in flour to the pot. Flour coated on butter disperses into the hot liquid without lumps and thickens it as it boils. Adding it to a liquid that is not hot enough, or stirring too little, leaves clumps or a thin sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

“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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