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Deviled Lobster

A baked lobster dish with cream, butter, flour, mustard, red pepper, salt, pepper, and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Deviled Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the cream over low heat.

  2. Stir in the lobster, butter, flour, mustard, red pepper, salt, and pepper until well combined.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish, cover with bread crumbs, and bake for 20 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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
Forms the main body of the filling and supplies the seafood flavour.
Cream
Thickens into a rich, smooth base that holds the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the cream and gives the filling structure as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps browning.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream over low heat. Flour thickens cream as its starch swells with heat. Heating gently and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps or scorching before the lobster is added.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, butter, flour, 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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