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Creamed Lobster

Creamed Lobster is a sauce of lobster meat, butter, flour, milk or cream, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the milk or cream until smooth.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir well.

Finish the dish

  1. Gently mix in the lobster meat and season with salt and cayenne.

  2. Ensure the mixture is creamy without breaking the lobster meat.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 meat
Provides the main flavor and protein; gentle handling keeps its pieces intact.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream sauce and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds moisture and richness.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps form the roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble into lumps. Stir them in gently over low heat so the sauce turns smooth and creamy.

“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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