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Lobster Pie

A baked pie of boiled lobster, shell broth, butter, and pastry topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters and remove the tails, cutting them in half and discarding the gut.

  2. Cut each tail into four pieces and place in a small dish.

  3. Add the claw meat and picked body meat, discarding any furry parts and lady or spawn.

Make the sauce

  1. In a mortar, beat the shells and set them to stew with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Add the butter rolled in flour to the stew and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it over the lobster in the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle crumbs on top and cover with pastry.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) 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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour thickens the stewed shell liquid.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the shell stew.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Straining the shell stew before pouring it over the lobster. Straining removes the crushed shell fragments so the sauce is smooth and the lobster is not gritty. Boiling the butter and flour for a few minutes cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the mixture thicken properly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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