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Another Lobster Pie

A savory pie made with boiled lobster, oysters, butter, bread, and puff pastry, topped with a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Another Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters and cut the tail meat into four pieces.

  2. Remove the meat from the claws and bodies, then pound it in a mortar.

  3. Add the soft part of one lobster, season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and mix in the vinegar.

  4. Melt the butter and combine it with the pounded meat and grated bread.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the edge and sides of a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Place the lobster tail in the dish, followed by a layer of oysters with their liquor, then the pounded meat.

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

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, pour in rich gravy made from weak stock boiled with lobster shells, onion, pepper, and salt, then strain and thicken with butter and flour.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Lobster + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and helps bind the pounded meat into a cohesive filling.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor and extra moisture to the filling layer.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the pie rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Pouring in the gravy before serving. Flour thickens gravy only when it is cooked and stirred long enough to gelatinize its starch; if it is not brought to a simmer and strained smooth, it stays thin or lumpy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, vinegar, butter, bread, oyster, onion. 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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