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Dressed Lobster

Lobster meat served in its shell with a sauce of stock and cream, topped with fried breadcrumbs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Dressed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shell and mince it, but not too finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce with well-seasoned stock and a little cream.

  2. If the lobster has any spawn, pound it and add it to the sauce.

  3. Heat the lobster meat thoroughly in the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture in the lobster shells, topped with fried bread crumbs and garnished with fried parsley.

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

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

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lobster + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 and the bulk of the dish's texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth mouthfeel.
Well-seasoned stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour through the dish.
Lobster spawn
Adds concentrated lobster flavour and a richer colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the lobster meat in the sauce. Lobster meat turns rubbery and dry when overcooked. Heating it gently in the sauce only until it is thoroughly warm keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, cream, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, cream, 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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