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To Stew Lobsters

A lobster stew made by simmering lobster shells with water, pepper, salt, mace, and wine, then adding lobster meat, butter, lemon juice, and coral.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

To Stew Lobsters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the meat from the shells of the lobsters.

  2. Place the shells in a pot with water, whole pepper, salt, and mace. Boil until the goodness is extracted, then strain the liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the lobster meat, cream or melted butter, coral, lemon juice, and wine with the strained liquid. Warm the mixture for a few minutes before serving.

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 + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Supplies the sweet meat and coral that give the stew its main flavour and richness.
Cream or thin melted butter
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the broth a rich, mellow body.
Wine
Adds a mild acidity and aroma that brightens the rich broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that lifts the flavour and balances the richness of the cream or butter.

The step that matters

Warming the finished stew. Warm gently rather than boil once the cream or butter is added. High heat can cause dairy to separate and turn grainy, and it can toughen the lobster meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, pepper, cream, lemon, wine):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, cream, lemon, wine. 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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