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Lobster Pie

A savory pie with lobster, bread, herbs, anchovy, egg yolks, stock, wine, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix grated bread, parsley, minced anchovy, lemon peel, mace, salt, pepper, bruised egg yolks, and butter.

  3. Combine with the beaten egg yolk and form small balls.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place lobster meat in a pie dish and cover with forcemeat balls and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Add stock, white wine, and lemon juice or vinegar.

  3. Cover with puff pastry and bake until the pastry is golden.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the pie and supplies the dish's sweet, delicate flavour.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky top crust that browns in the oven.
Grated bread
Binds the forcemeat balls and keeps them light and tender.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape while cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat balls.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stock poured over the lobster.

The step that matters

Covering with puff pastry and baking. The pastry must be sealed well and baked until golden so the filling heats through and the crust sets crisp rather than soggy. Pastry browns through the Maillard reaction and the butter in it steams to create flaky layers.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, bread, parsley, anchovy, lemon, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, bread, parsley, anchovy, lemon, pepper. 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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