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Lobster Croquetts

Lobster croquettes are small balls of boiled lobster meat mixed with spices, bread crumbs, butter, and egg, then coated and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Croquetts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the meat of a boiled lobster finely.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace if desired.

  3. Mix in ¼ cup of bread crumbs for every cup of lobster meat.

  4. Stir in 2 tablespoons of melted butter.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Roll each ball in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquette filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold its shape.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Egg
Binds the coating so the cracker crumbs stick to each ball.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs more fat and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat sets and browns the crust quickly, keeping the inside moist.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, pepper, bread, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, pepper, bread, butter, egg. 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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