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Lobster Patties

A creamy lobster patty made with boiled lobster, milk, flour, butter, lemon, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

  2. Dissolve the flour in a little cold milk and add it to the hot milk.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens, then gradually add the butter until fully incorporated.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the lobster pieces and heat until warm.

  2. Serve by filling the heated lobster shells with the mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Lobster tails
Provide the main protein and meaty texture of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the lobster.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to hot milk. Flour dissolved in cold milk and then added to hot milk disperses evenly, while adding dry flour directly can form lumps. Stirring keeps starch granules separated so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“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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