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Stuffed Lobster

A lobster shell filled with a creamy sauce of lobster meat, stock, cream, and seasonings, topped with bread crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stuffed 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.

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the stock and cream with the bay leaf, then remove the bay leaf.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add the cream and stock mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and lemon juice.

  6. Once the sauce thickens, add the lobster meat and pecans, mixing well.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the lobster shell with the mixture.

  2. Top with buttered bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of watercress.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 meat
Forms the main body of the filling, providing the dish's core texture and flavour.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the cream and stock into a smooth, binding sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set, giving a creamy, cohesive filling when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a silky texture.
Rich white stock
Supplies savoury depth to the sauce and thins it with the cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot liquid, so the sauce should be thick and only warm when they are stirred in, then kept below a simmer to stay smooth and set gently.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

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