Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Croquettes

A fried dish of minced lobster mixed with butter, flour, spices, and egg, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lobster Croquettes

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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine minced lobster, salt, spices, and cayenne.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, then stir in the lobster and parsley.

  3. Moisten with stock until the mixture resembles minced veal.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks; let cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into cork‑like forms.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. After an hour, repeat the egg and bread crumb coating.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Flesh of lobster
Provides the main body and flavour of the croquette filling.
Butter
Enriches the filling and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and lobster mixture so it can hold its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set firm once cooled.
Baked bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Once the egg yolks are stirred in, the filling must cool and firm up; shaping it while warm leaves it soft and likely to slump or break apart in the hot lard.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes