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Lobster Farce

A creamy lobster mixture baked in shells, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lobster Farce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until it turns yellow.

  3. Add the cream, salt, and pepper, and boil until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat, add the lobster, and mix well.

Chill and fill

  1. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for 3 hours.

  2. Fill shells with the lobster mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs and dot with butter on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown and serve hot with peas.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Provides the main flavor and the meaty body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a stable sauce that holds the lobster together.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and smooth, and thickens as it boils.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned topping over the filling in the oven.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream sauce until thick. The flour must be cooked into the cream while stirring constantly, or the sauce can lump or scorch. Boiling activates the starch so the sauce thickens enough to hold the filling together.

“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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