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Lobsters, Hamburg Fashion

Lobsters served with a Madeira and meat glaze sauce, enriched with butter, breadcrumbs, cayenne, parsley, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobsters, Hamburg Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobsters

  1. Boil the lobsters until cooked.

  2. Remove the claws and split the bodies lengthwise in half.

  3. Pick the tails and arrange them in a circle on a hot dish, placing the claws in the center.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the melted meat glaze and Madeira, then boil and set aside.

  2. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, butter, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

  3. Add the mixture to the liquid while stirring to thicken the sauce without boiling.

  4. Stir in the creamy substance from the lobster bodies and vinegar into the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the lobsters and serve immediately.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main cooked meat and the creamy substance that enriches the sauce.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated savory body and depth to the sauce.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aroma to the sauce as it reduces.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the sauce, giving it body without a flour roux.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the bread crumb and butter mixture without boiling. Stirring the crumb and butter mixture into hot liquid off the boil thickens it gently. Boiling can break the butter emulsion and make the sauce grainy or oily.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, bread, butter, pepper, vinegar. 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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