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Lobster Cutlets

A fried dish of lobster meat mixed with cream, butter, flour, and seasonings, shaped into small cutlets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster base

  1. Boil the cream or milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, salt, cayenne, parsley, and beaten eggs.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling milk and cook for about 2 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped lobster.

  5. Let it cool on a platter.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, shape the mixture into small chops.

  2. Roll each chop in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling lard for about 2 minutes until golden brown.

  4. Drain and insert a small clove in each to represent a bone.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + lobstertop 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and, beaten, form a coating that helps the crumbs stick.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a firm mixture that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the mixture.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard-like mass.
Boiled lobster
Provides the main flavor and the bulk of the cutlet filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Once the thickened mixture is warm and soft, it is too fragile to hold a shape. Cooling lets the starch and egg set so the chops keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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