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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are breaded lobster meat patties fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and chop it finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lobster meat, bread crumbs, chopped onion, mace, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Form the mixture into cutlet shapes and let them cool.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in boiling butter 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper 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 of the cutlet and gives it its flavour.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and form a crisp coating that browns when fried.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the filling.
Butter
Fat that fries the cutlets, adding richness and browning the coating.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in boiling butter until golden brown. The butter must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy before they colour, and the cutlet may fall apart in the pan.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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