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To Butter Lobsters or Crabs

A dish of lobster or crab meat simmered with wine, pickle, gravy, butter, spices, and egg yolks, served in shells with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Butter Lobsters or Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the meat from the lobster or crab bodies and mince it finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the minced meat, white wine, lemon pickle, rich gravy, butter, salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot, then thicken it with the beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into the large shells and garnish with toasted bread around the edges.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster or crab meat
Provides the main flavour and the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm mixture into a creamy, spoonable texture as they set with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the filling.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy filling.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils after they are added, they can scramble and turn grainy. Heat gently and stir constantly so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, white wine, lemon, butter, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, white wine, lemon, butter, pepper, egg, bread. 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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