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Lobster Patties

A pastry shell filled with a seasoned lobster mixture, baked and served.

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shells

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry and line deep patty pans.

  3. Bake the pastry shells until golden and remove from the pans.

Make the filling

  1. Extract and mince the lobster meat, mixing it with the coral and egg yolk.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, Cayenne, mace, and lemon rind.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream or salad oil and add a little water.

  4. Steam the mixture until it just comes to a boil, then remove from heat.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked pastry shells with the lobster mixture and serve.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lobster
Provides the main savoury meat and flavour of the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered shell that holds the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the minced filling together.
Cream or salad oil
Adds moisture and fat so the filling stays tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture until it just comes to a boil. Heating the filling gently and only until it just boils keeps the lobster and egg tender; overheating toughens the proteins and makes the filling dry and rubbery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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