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Eggs, Carmelite

Eggs coated in a lobster and flour mixture, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Eggs, Carmelite

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Shell the hard-boiled eggs and roll them in a little flour.

Make the lobster paste

  1. Melt the butter in a pan. Mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the chopped lobster and cold water, stirring until it boils and leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Coat and fry

  1. Flatten some of the lobster mixture and roll an egg in it, keeping the shape of the egg.

  2. Brush each coated egg with the beaten egg.

  3. Roll in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the coated eggs in hot oil until golden brown.

  5. Drain on paper.

  6. Serve whole or cut in halves.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the soft centre that the lobster coating surrounds.
Flour
Thickens the lobster mixture into a firm paste that holds its shape.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the body of the coating.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the flour roux.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the bread crumbs stick to the coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Stirring the lobster mixture until it boils and leaves the pan clean. The flour must be fully cooked and the mixture thick enough to hold its shape. If it is too loose, it will slide off the egg and may break open in the hot oil. Cooling it fully before coating also keeps it firm.

“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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