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Petits Pates of Lobster

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Petits Pates of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked lobster and cut it into small squares.

  2. In a clean bowl, pound the lobster spawn with the butter until smooth.

  3. Scrape the mixture through a fine sieve into a dish.

  4. Heat the béchamel sauce and mix in the pounded lobster spawn.

  5. Add the lemon juice and glaze, mixing well.

  6. Combine this mixture with the lobster meat and fill your petits pâtés.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Lobster + lemontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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