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Stewed or Curried Lobster

A creamy lobster dish simmered with butter, flour, stock, spices, and optional curry, served in a shell or dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed or Curried 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. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the stock or milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Add the mace, cayenne pepper, and salt, then mix well.

Cook the lobster

  1. Incorporate the lobster meat and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the curry powder and stir.

Finish and serve

  1. Optionally, place the mixture in a cleaned lobster shell.

  2. Optionally, sprinkle with crumbs.

  3. Optionally, brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Alternatively, layer the lobster and crumbs in a buttered dish.

  5. Alternatively, finish with crumbs.

  6. Alternatively, bake.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 dish and supplies its flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock or milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Stock or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock or milk slowly. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, flour, milk, pepper, bread. 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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