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Lobster Quenel

A baked lobster quenelle made with lobster meat and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Quenel

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the lobster meat, omitting the butter.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Cook

  1. Add the lobster and stir to prevent burning until thoroughly hot.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a small oval mold.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove most of the shell from the lobster body and place the head at one end and the tail at the other on the dish.

  2. Arrange three small feet on each side for decoration.

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. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  2. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main protein, which sets into a firm, tender body when gently heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the lobster moist while it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring the lobster while it heats. Butter milk solids and lobster proteins scorch quickly over direct heat. Constant stirring keeps the mixture moving so it warms evenly without burning, which would make it bitter.

“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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