Name: Lobster Cutlets
Ingredients: 1 lobster; 1½ ounces butter; ½ cup cream; seasoning and flavoring to taste; 1 ounce flour; 1 egg; bread for coating; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Take a small hen-lobster and place it on a board.
Use a chopper to break the shell by hitting it with the blade, not the edge.
Remove the shell from the claws and back, and extract all the flesh.
Cut the lobster flesh into small dice-sized pieces.
If it's a hen-lobster, remove the coral from the neck and back, and wash it in cold water.
Pound the coral and 1 ounce of butter in a mortar until well combined.
Pass the mixture through a sieve into a plate, scraping off any residue.
In a stewpan, mix 1 ounce of flour and ½ ounce of butter with a wooden spoon.
Add ½ cup of cold water and place the stewpan on the fire, stirring continuously.

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.

Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,050 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the parsley

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

Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, cream, flour, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.