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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are made from chopped lobster mixed with sauce, shaped, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Once the mixture is cold, shape it into cutlets.

  3. Dip each cutlet in egg yolk and then coat with bread crumbs.

Cook

  1. Fry the cutlets until golden brown.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body and flavor of the cutlets.
Thick white sauce
Binds the lobster together and adds moisture so the mixture holds together.
Egg yolk
Helps the bread crumb coating stick and promotes even browning when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and white sauce.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture before shaping. A warm mixture is soft because its fat and starch have not set, so cutlets slump and break apart. Chilling firms the sauce so the cutlets keep their shape through dipping and frying.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, pepper, lemon, egg, 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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