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Berliner Lobster

A lobster dish made with butter, egg yolks, cream, sherry, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Berliner Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the cream in a separate bowl over hot water until creamy.

  3. Remove from heat and add salt, paprika, and sherry.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the lobster and serve immediately while hot.

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 dish and carries the rich sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a smooth, custard-like sauce when gently heated.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body, softening the texture of the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and nutty, aromatic flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks with the cream over hot water. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Keep the water hot, not boiling, and keep beating until the mixture is creamy.

“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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