Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Patties

A baked dish of lobster, claws, spawn, gravy, breadcrumbs, egg, butter, pepper, salt, lemon, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lobster Patties

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. Mash the small claws and spawn in a dish until it forms a paste.

  2. Add gravy and bread crumbs.

  3. Heat the mixture over the fire until boiling.

  4. Strain the mixture until it reaches the thickness of cream.

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine half of the strained mixture with the lobster, butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Warm the mixture until the butter melts, then let it cool.

  3. Line a patty pan or dish with puff pastry.

  4. Fill the pan with the lobster mixture.

  5. Cover with more puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

  2. Cut the top pastry cover.

  3. Warm the remaining sauce with a little butter until thickened.

  4. Pour the sauce over the patty.

  5. Add a squeeze of lemon.

  6. Place the cut pastry cover on top, leaving space to see the filling.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flesh and flavour of the filling.
Small claws and spawn
Mashed into a paste to add concentrated lobster flavour and body to the sauce.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury depth to the sauce base.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the mixture by absorbing liquid, giving it a soft body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and keeping the filling moist.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered crust that browns as it bakes.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture until it reaches the thickness of cream. The sauce must be smooth and properly thickened; straining removes solids so the sauce coats the filling rather than leaving it grainy or watery.

“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