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To Boil a Lobster

A lobster boiled in salted water, then split and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and parsley work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

To Boil a Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a large pot with water and add a handful of coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the water to a rolling boil.

  3. Brush the lobster and tie its claws together with twine.

Boil

  1. Carefully place the lobster in the boiling water.

  2. Boil for 30 to 60 minutes, depending on the size of the lobster.

  3. Remove the lobster and let it drain on its claws.

Serve

  1. Wipe the lobster dry and split the body and tail open.

  2. Remove the claws and arrange the large claws next to the body and the small ones outside.

  3. Garnish with 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. Lobster + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Its protein sets as it cooks, firming the meat into a tender but sliceable texture.

The step that matters

Timing the boil. Lobster proteins tighten as they cook, so boiling too long squeezes out moisture and leaves the meat rubbery. Size determines how long it needs, so time it by weight.

“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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