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Devilled Lobster

A spicy lobster dish with butter, ketchup, mustard, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Devilled Lobster

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Mix the lobster, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the tomato ketchup and the lobster mixture.

  3. Stir in the mustard, a little cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Serve 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Lobster + ketchuptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main protein and a tender, meaty texture for the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the warm sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, forming the base of the tangy sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the mustard, cayenne, and lemon juice. Acidic and pungent seasonings are best added once the sauce is warm but not boiling, so their sharp flavors blend evenly rather than turning harsh or uneven.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, ketchup, mustard, lemon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, vinegar, pepper, butter, ketchup, mustard, lemon. 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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