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
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
Boil the lobsters until cooked, then remove the tails and cut them in half.
Remove the gut and cut each tail into four pieces, placing them in a small dish.
Add the meat from the claws and the body, discarding any furry parts and the lady (roe).
Make the sauce
Beat the spawn and shells in a mortar, then stew them with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and pounded mace.
Add the butter rolled in flour to the stew and boil for a few minutes.
Strain the mixture and pour it over the lobster in the dish.
Bake and serve
Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and cover with pastry.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the pastry is cooked through.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,814 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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, which is cooked briefly and set in the pie.
- Butter
- Adds richness and body to the sauce when rolled in flour and boiled.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce as it is cooked with the butter.
- Vinegar
- Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, dry layer on top beneath the pastry.
The step that matters
Boil the butter and flour into the sauce. Boiling the flour-coated butter for a few minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and fully thickens the sauce; undercooking leaves it pasty and floury.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread):
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Capersfits better
- 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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