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Zo Butter Lobster

A lobster dish cooked in a butter and cream sauce, served in its shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Zo Butter Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the minced lobster meat in a stewpan with salt, pepper, nutmeg, vinegar, and white wine.

  2. Add the butter mixed with flour and cream.

  3. Blend well for 10 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. Clean one lobster shell.

  2. Split it in half from head to tail.

  3. Fill it with the buttered lobster mixture.

  4. Garnish with lemon.

  5. Serve.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream so the sauce holds together rather than running thin.
Cream
Adds moisture and body, softening the sauce and rounding its flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich butter and cream.

The step that matters

Blending the butter, flour and cream. Flour must be fully worked into the butter and liquid, or the sauce can turn lumpy or thin. Blending steadily over the stated time helps the starch hydrate evenly and the sauce emulsify into a smooth, cohesive mixture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, pepper, vinegar, white wine, butter, flour. 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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