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Lobster Quenelles

Lobster quenelles are poached lobster meat, breadcrumbs, and eggs folded into a smooth mixture, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked lobster.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lobster meat, breadcrumbs, white stock, butter, salt, pepper, and lemon peel.

  3. Pound the mixture until smooth, then pass it through a sieve.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the lobster mixture.

Poach and serve

  1. Mold the mixture using a dessert spoon and poach gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Arrange the quenelles in a circle on a serving dish.

  3. Cover with a good white sauce.

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. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main flavour and the body of the quenelles.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture enough body to hold its shape.
Eggs
Egg whites set when poached and lighten the mixture, giving a delicate, airy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the quenelles tender.
White stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiff egg whites gently. Deflating the whites by overmixing removes the air that lightens the quenelles. Gentle folding keeps the mixture airy so it sets tender rather than dense when poached.

“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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