Skip to main content
Main

A Lobster Pie

A savory pie filled with boiled lobster, oysters, shrimp, and a forcemeat of suet, anchovies, and bread crumbs, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

A Lobster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the lobster meat with pepper, salt, and mace.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and add the lobster, oysters, shrimps, bread crumbs, and butter.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing oysters, suet, anchovies, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and egg yolks.

  3. Form the mixture into balls and add them to the dish with oyster liquor and gravy.

  4. Cover with the pastry lid and bake for less than 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Lobster + shrimptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Meat + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the pie its sweet, rich flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and help it set firm while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the forcemeat body and a tender texture.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden shell and lid that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Forming and adding the forcemeat balls. Egg yolks in the forcemeat set when heated, so the balls hold their shape. Packing them too loosely or too tightly changes how the filling binds and cooks through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes