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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are breaded lobster meat coated in a creamy sauce and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped lobster, cayenne, salt, and mustard.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then add salt, flour, and white pepper. Gradually stir in the milk or cream until smooth.

  3. Mix the sauce with the lobster mixture and spread it on a plate.

  4. Once cold, shape the mixture into cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each cutlet in dry bread crumbs, then dip in the beaten egg, and roll again in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in deep fat until golden brown.

  3. Garnish each cutlet with a lobster claw.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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 meat
Provides the main flavor and the bulk of the cutlet filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the cutlet mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a sauce that holds the cutlet together.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving a smooth, binding texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres during frying.
Dry bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture before shaping. The sauce must be fully cold so it firms up enough to hold its shape. Shaping a warm mixture leads to soft cutlets that can break or fall apart during coating and frying.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, mustard, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, mustard, butter, flour, milk. 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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