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Creamed Lobster

A creamy lobster dish baked with breadcrumbs, seasoned with pepper, parsley, and onion.

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

Creamed Lobster

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 sauce

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk until smooth, then slowly stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Season the mixture with black pepper, red pepper, chopped parsley, and onion.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a dish, layer the minced lobster and cream mixture alternately.

  2. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds and moistens the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the lobster together.
Lobster or crab
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender, moist filling.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp top that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour lumps form if it is added to hot liquid without being first smoothed in cold milk. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly and smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, pepper, parsley, lobster, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, pepper, parsley, lobster, bread. 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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