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Fricasseed Lobster

A lobster fricassee made by boiling lobster, seasoning, simmering in cream, and finishing with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fricasseed Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster in salted water for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on its size.

  2. Remove the lobster from the water and extract the meat from the shell, cutting it into small pieces.

  3. Season the lobster meat with white pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Make the fricassee

  1. Place the seasoned meat in a stew pan and cover it with cream.

  2. Cover the pan with a lid and set it on hot coals, cooking slowly for the same time it was boiled.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the beaten egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Serve in a small dish on a larger dish, arranging the small claws around it.

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 + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meat, which is cut small and gently cooked in the cream.
Cream
Covers the meat and cooks slowly, giving the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Egg yolk
Stirred in at the end to thicken the cream and enrich the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly under the lid. Gentle heat keeps the lobster meat tender and prevents the cream from separating or curdling. Cooking it hard can toughen the protein and make the sauce grainy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, nutmeg, cream, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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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