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Lobster Pie

A pie filled with lobster meat, anchovy essence, lemon juice, bread, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lobster Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cover the inside of a pie dish with the pie crust.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the lobster meat into lengths and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Add pepper, essence of anchovy, lemon juice, grated bread, egg yolks, and melted butter to the lobster meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the lobster mixture into the pie dish and cover with a top crust.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

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 + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main filling and gives the pie its rich seafood flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Grated bread
Soaks up liquid and helps give the filling a firmer, spreadable body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth texture in the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and butter flavours.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven until golden. Egg yolks set the filling as they heat, so baking too long can make it dry or grainy, while too little time leaves it soft. Browning the crust signals it is ready.

“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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