Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Patties

A pastry shell filled with a lobster mixture of stock, eggs, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shells

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

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

  3. Bake the pastry shells until lightly golden before filling.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the lobster finely and mix it with white stock.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped lobster with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Season the mixture with cayenne pepper, Sherry wine, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Add ½ cup of sweet cream and a lump of butter.

  5. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil, then fill the baked pastry shells.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling.
Lobster
Provides the main body and delicate flavour of the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set to a smooth, thick texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Baking the pastry shells until lightly golden before filling. Pre-baking sets and dries the pastry so it stays crisp rather than soaking up the hot, moist filling and turning soggy.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes