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Lobster Chops

Lobster chops are fried lobster meat coated in egg and breadcrumbs, served hot with tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the boiled lobster meat.

  2. Make a thick white sauce and add the lobster meat, onion, and parsley.

  3. Cook thoroughly, then season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Remove from heat and cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into chop shapes.

  2. Dip each chop in beaten egg, then roll in grated bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with a claw in each chop to represent the bone, alongside tartare 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main filling and gives the chops their flavour and body.
Thick white sauce
Binds the lobster meat into a mixture that holds its shape.
Egg
Coats the chops so the bread crumbs adhere during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture completely before shaping. A warm, soft white sauce mixture stays loose and sticky, so the chops can slump or split. Fully cooling it lets the starch in the sauce set so the shapes hold through breading and frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, parsley, sauce, pepper, 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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