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Lobster Pie

A baked lobster pie with pastry crust, bread crumbs, and a lobster broth made from shells, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the tails, cut them in half, and discard the gut.

  3. Cut the tails into four pieces.

  4. Place the pieces in a small dish.

  5. Add the meat from the claws.

  6. Add the picked meat from the body.

  7. Discard any furry parts.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the shells with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Simmer the mixture.

  3. Add butter rolled in flour to the pot.

  4. Boil for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Pour the strained liquid over the lobster in the dish.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  2. Cover with a thin pastry.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the pastry is cooked.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, thickens the strained liquid.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the shell broth.

The step that matters

Strain and pour the sauce. Straining removes shell fragments and solids so the liquid is smooth. Adding the flour-coated butter and boiling briefly lets the flour cook and thicken the sauce, so it does not taste raw or pasty.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread, white 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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