Skip to main content
Main

Cold Dressed Lobster and Crab

A cold dish of lobster and crab served with remoulade or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lobster and crab work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 196 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Cold Dressed Lobster and Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the large claws from the lobsters and crack the shells without damaging the meat.

  2. Split the tails open with a sharp knife.

  3. If using the soft part of the lobster body, remove it before serving and mix it with the sauce.

Prepare the crab

  1. Clean the crab shells thoroughly and fill them with the white crab meat and soft part.

  2. For presentation, use the flesh of two crabs in one shell and mix with sauce just before serving.

Plate and serve

  1. Dish the lobster as shown in the engraving, with or without a napkin underneath.

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. Lobster + crabtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Crab + shrimptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together123 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Lobster + shrimptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

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

  5. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

The step that matters

Mixing the sauce with the crab flesh just before serving. Dressing crab meat too early lets the sauce soften and thin the delicate meat and release moisture, which dulls its texture and flavour. Adding the sauce at the last moment keeps the meat firm and distinct.

“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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes