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Lobster Croquettes

Lobster croquettes are fried balls of finely chopped lobster meat bound with bread crumbs, butter, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Croquettes

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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop the lobster meat very fine.

  3. Mix the chopped lobster with pepper, salt, and nutmeg or mace.

  4. Dry the bread slices in the oven.

  5. Rub the dried bread slices into fine crumbs.

Make the croquette mixture

  1. Combine the lobster mixture with ¼ of the bread crumbs.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the lobster mixture.

  3. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg.

  4. Form the mixture into round balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the balls in beaten egg.

  2. Coat the balls with cracker dust.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot drippings until golden brown.

  4. Serve very hot, garnished with cress.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main filling and flavor of the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.

The step that matters

Form and coat the balls firmly. If the mixture is too wet or loosely bound, the balls can fall apart in the hot drippings. Binding with egg and coating with cracker dust gives a firm shell that holds together and browns evenly when fried.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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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