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Lobster Patties

Lobster patties made with boiled lobster, shrimp, gravy, breadcrumbs, butter, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

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 filling

  1. Mash the lobster pieces and small claws with a potato masher.

  2. Add gravy and bread crumbs, then heat over the fire until boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture until it thickens to a cream-like consistency.

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

  5. Warm until the butter melts, then let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a patty pan or dish with puff pastry, fill it with the lobster mixture, and cover with more pastry.

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

  3. After baking, cut the top pastry cover.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Pour the sauce over the patty and place the pastry cover on top, leaving a gap to show 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. Lobster + shrimptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

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

  4. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 meaty filling and flavor of the patty.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory body that thickens the filling into a creamy mixture.
Bread crumbs
Help bind and thicken the mixture so it holds together in the pastry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered crust that browns as it bakes around the filling.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture until creamy. Straining removes solids so the sauce turns smooth; under-reduced or lumpy mixture makes the filling watery or grainy and can soften the pastry from below.

“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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