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Lobster Cutlets

A dish of boiled lobster meat coated in a creamy batter, breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the flour, cottolene, cream, and egg yolks in a saucepan and heat until just boiling, but do not let it boil.

  2. Add the mixture and seasonings to the chopped lobster meat and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then mold it into cutlet shapes using your hands.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet first in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot cottolene until they are light brown.

Serve

  1. Place a small claw at the end of each cutlet and serve immediately.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping the cutlets hold their shape when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it can be shaped into firm cutlets.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the lobster mixture tender.
Cottolene
Fat that adds richness and browns the outside of the cutlets when fried.

The step that matters

Heat the cream mixture without boiling. Boiling can curdle the egg yolks and scramble them, making the custard grainy and weakening its ability to bind the lobster.

Swap the mace

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

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

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