Skip to main content
Main

Lobster in Puff Paste

Lobster pieces baked in puff pastry shells with a lemony, spiced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster in Puff Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. Heat broth to a boil, skim, and stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  2. Add lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and beaten yolks to the broth.

  3. Add the lobster pieces to the broth and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Bake and serve

  1. Line paté pans with puff pastry and bake until golden.

  2. Fill the baked shells with the hot lobster mixture and return to the oven for 3 minutes before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the hot broth into a smooth, spoonable filling as its starch swells.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the broth.
Lobster
Forms the main filling, and its protein firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Forms the shell, rising in layers and baking into a flaky, crisp case.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling broth. Adding the flour mixture to boiling liquid while stirring keeps it from clumping. The starch then swells evenly and thickens the broth into a smooth filling.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes