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Lobster Farcie

Stuffed lobster shells filled with lobster meat, mushrooms, and seasoned butter mixture, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Lobster Farcie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Combine boiling milk, flour, and butter in a saucepan to make a rich drawn butter.

  2. Stir until thick, then add chopped lobster meat and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Season with salt, red pepper, mustard, and mace; mix thoroughly and let stand for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the lobster shells with the mixture, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and dot with butter.

  2. Brush the outside of the shells with olive oil to enhance color.

  3. Bake at 400 °F (200 °C) until golden brown.

  4. Serve in the shells, garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the boiled milk and butter into a rich, creamy sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the topping brown.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavour and tender texture in the filling.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thick before adding the lobster. Flour only thickens fully once the milk and butter mixture is stirred and heated, and a thin sauce would make the filling runny and cause it to spill or soak the crumbs.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, meat, lobster, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, meat, lobster, mushroom, 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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