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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are fried pieces of lobster meat mixed with white sauce, egg, and bread crumbs, served with peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the cooked lobster and cut it into fine pieces.

  2. Mix the lobster meat with the heavy white sauce and the cooked egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Mould the mixture into cutlet shapes and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Insert a claw into the small end of each cutlet.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets surrounded by peas and drizzled with white or Hollandaise 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. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  4. Lobster + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the tender filling of the cutlets.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the lobster pieces together and keeps the filling moist.
Egg
Helps bind the mixture so the cutlets hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets in hot oil. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up grease and the cutlets may fall apart or turn pale. Hot oil sets the crumb coating quickly and browns it, which holds the shape and gives a crisp outside.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, 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.

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