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Lobster Farci

Stuffed lobster shells with lobster meat, egg yolks, parsley, white sauce, salt, pepper, topped with buttered crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Lobster Farci

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the lobster meat, egg yolks (rubbed into a paste), parsley, white sauce, salt, and pepper.

  2. Fill the lobster shells with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Cover with buttered crumbs.

  2. Bake until the crumbs are brown.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  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

Lobster meat
Forms the main filling and provides the dish's core flavor and texture.
Egg yolks
Rubbed into a paste, they enrich the filling and help bind it.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the filling holds together without drying out.
Buttered crumbs
Fat in the crumbs promotes browning on top during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until the crumbs are brown. Browning depends on heat and fat in the crumbs; pulling the dish too early leaves the topping pale and the filling underheated, while overbaking can dry the lobster and scorch the crumbs.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, egg, parsley, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, parsley, sauce, pepper. 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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