Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Lobster Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the lobster
Boil the lobsters until cooked, then remove the tails and cut them in half.
Remove the gut and cut each tail into 4 pieces, placing them in a small dish.
Add the meat from the claws and the body, ensuring to remove any furry parts.
In a mortar, beat the spawn from the lobsters.
Make the sauce
In a pot, combine the lobster shells with water, vinegar, pepper, salt, and ground mace.
Add a large piece of butter rolled in flour to the pot and bring to a boil to extract flavor from the shells.
Strain the mixture and pour it over the lobster pieces in the dish.
Bake and serve
Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and cover with pastry.
Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the pastry is cooked.
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.
-
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,814 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
-
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
-
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Lobsters
- Provide the main meat and spawn that form the body of the pie.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour of the shell broth.
- Flour
- Rolled around the butter, it helps thicken the shell broth as it boils.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity that brightens the shell broth and balances the rich lobster.
The step that matters
Boiling the shells with butter and flour. Boiling the shells extracts their flavour into the liquid. Flour-coated butter must be stirred into a boil so it disperses rather than clumping, which would leave the broth lumpy and thin.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread):
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Capersfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, flour, bread. 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.
You might also like
Brown Bread461 recipes
Lobster Sauce174 recipes
Lobster Croquettes99 recipes
White Bread80 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.