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Creamed Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in a creamy milk sauce with breadcrumbs, served in scallop shells.

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 ↓

Creamed Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Strain off the lobster liquor if using canned seafood.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into small dice and season it.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and add a tiny bit of baking soda.

  2. When hot, stir in the butter mixed with flour until it thickens.

  3. Add the lobster meat to the sauce and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter the scallop shells and fill them with the lobster mixture.

  2. Top with dry bread crumbs and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon and crackers.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 and flavour of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and carries the flour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce as it heats and binds with the butter.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden topping when browned in the oven.

The step that matters

When hot, stir in the butter mixed with flour until it thickens. Adding the butter-flour paste to hot milk and stirring constantly lets the starch swell evenly; if it is added cold or not stirred, lumps form and the sauce stays thin or grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, milk, cream, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, milk, cream, butter, flour, pepper, 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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