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Stewed Lobster

A lobster stew simmered in butter, stock, onions, tomatoes, okra, Tabasco, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Drain the lobster from the liquor.

  2. Melt butter in a frying pan. Add lobster meat and simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and stock or hot water. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

Make the vegetable sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter. Fry minced onion until brown.

  2. Add sliced tomatoes, okra, salt, and Tabasco. Cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the liquor from the lobster can. Cook for 5 more minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine with the stewed lobster. Add lemon juice. Serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Okra + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and firm as it simmers in the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted and used to fry the onion and start the lobster.
Onion
Frying until brown builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, thickening the stew as they cook down with the okra.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch as it cooks, giving the stew a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Fry the onion until brown. Browning the onion develops deeper, sweeter flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale onion would leave the sauce tasting flat and raw.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, pepper, onion, tomato, okra, sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, pepper, onion, tomato, okra, sauce. 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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