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Creustade of Lobster

A baked lobster dish with bread, tomato, white sauce, and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Creustade of Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the loaf

  1. Cut off the top of the loaf of stale bread and scoop out the interior, leaving a half wall.

  2. Spread butter on the inside of the loaf and bake until crisp.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer cooked lobster meat over the bottom, then layer boiled thinly-sliced tomatoes on top of the lobster.

  2. Add a highly seasoned white sauce between each layer, top with fine bread crumbs, and dot with butter.

  3. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with halved stuffed olives, additional lobster, clams, and parsley.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the crisp shell that holds the filling in place.
Cooked lobster meat
Provides the main seafood filling and its rich, savoury flavour.
Boiled thinly-sliced tomatoes
Adds moisture and gentle acidity to balance the rich sauce and lobster.
White sauce
Binds the layers together and keeps the filling moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crisp and brown on top.

The step that matters

Bake the bread shell until crisp. If the bread is not baked until crisp, it will soften under the wet lobster and sauce filling and lose its structure. Browning the buttered interior first gives it a sturdy, dry base that holds the layers.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lobster, meat, sauce, olive, clam):

  1. Tomatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lobster, meat, sauce, olive, clam. 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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