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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets coated in breadcrumbs and fried, made with lobster, white sauce, egg yolk, parsley, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, then add flour and salt. Cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Gradually add milk to the mixture and cook until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk.

Shape and fry

  1. In a bowl, combine lobster meat, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, lemon juice, and parsley.

  2. Mix the lobster mixture with the white sauce.

  3. Shape the mixture into cutlets about ½ inch thick.

  4. Coat each cutlet in breadcrumbs, then dip in beaten egg, and coat again in breadcrumbs.

  5. Fry the cutlets in deep fat 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 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 meat
Forms the main body and flavour of the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the white sauce body.
Butter
Fat that starts the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the roux to form a thick white sauce.
Egg yolk
Stirred into the hot sauce to enrich it and help bind the mixture.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in deep fat until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the breadcrumb coating before the soft, sauce-bound filling overheats. Cutlets that are not well coated or are too cold may break apart or absorb excess fat.

“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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