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Cold Lobster

Cold Lobster is a chilled lobster dish served with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, mustard, salad oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the large claws from the lobster and crack the shell lightly without damaging the meat.

  2. Split open the tail with a sharp knife.

Plate and serve

  1. Arrange the lobster on a folded napkin with the head upright in the center and the tail and claws neatly arranged around it.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

  3. Serve with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, mustard, salad oil, and vinegar.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat; cracking the shell lightly keeps the flesh intact for serving.

The step that matters

Cracking the claws and splitting the tail. Cracking the shell too hard can shatter it into the meat and make the lobster hard to serve cleanly. Light cracks loosen the shell so the meat can be removed whole, while a sharp knife gives a clean split without tearing the flesh.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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