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Scalloped Lobster

A lobster dish baked with white sauce, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scalloped Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Flake the lobster or remove meat from fresh lobster and cut into cubes.

  2. Heat the lobster in the white sauce and add seasonings.

Fill and bake

  1. Refill lobster shells or place in ramekins.

  2. To prevent shells from curling, insert small wooden skewers.

  3. Brush shells with olive oil before baking.

  4. Cover with buttered crumbs and bake until crumbs are brown.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,247 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + lemontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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 protein and the substance of the dish.
White sauce
Binds the lobster pieces together and keeps the filling moist.
Buttered crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and lobster.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are brown. Baking heat browns the buttered crumbs through the Maillard reaction, which creates flavor and color. Stopping too early leaves a pale, soft topping, while overbaking can dry the filling beneath.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, sauce, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Grapefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, pepper. 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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