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Buttered Lobster

A lobster dish cooked with butter, vinegar, pepper, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buttered Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters and remove the meat from the shells.

  2. Mince or chop the meat small, including the inside and the spawn.

Cook and serve

  1. Add vinegar, pepper, salt, and butter rolled in flour to the lobster meat.

  2. Stir the mixture together and heat it in a stew-pan over coals.

  3. Serve the mixture in the trimmed lobster shells.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat that makes up the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and keeping the lobster moist as it heats.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the mixture slightly as it heats.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich butter and lobster.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently while stirring. Over coals the butter and flour can scorch or separate if heated too hard. Stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly and the lobster stays tender rather than tough.

“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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