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Escalloped Lobster

Escalloped Lobster is a baked lobster dish with cracker crumbs, butter, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Escalloped Lobster

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.

Prepare

  1. Butter a baking dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer the chopped lobster and cracker crumbs alternately in the dish.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and dot with butter.

  3. Moisten the layers with milk.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Lobster + milktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together489 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 gives it its savory seafood flavor.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter, helping the layers hold together as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the layers so the crumbs soften and the dish does not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Moisten the layers with milk. Crumbs need enough liquid to soften and bind with the lobster; too little milk leaves the dish dry, while the layers still need to be moistened evenly before baking.

“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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