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Lobster Cutlets

Small pieces of lobster meat are cooked in a butter‑flour sauce, formed into cutlets, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dice the lobster meat into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, beat the butter and flour over medium heat until smooth.

  3. Add the water, boil, and stir in the cream, lemon juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, and lobster butter.

  4. Mix in the lobster meat and stir over the heat until combined.

  5. Pour the mixture onto a plate and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, lightly flour the mixture and form it into cutlets about ⅓ inch thick and 3 inches long.

  2. Insert a small piece of claw into each cutlet.

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

  4. Let the cutlets sit for a few minutes, then dip them in egg and bread crumbs again.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until lightly colored.

  2. Place finished cutlets on blotting paper before serving.

  3. Arrange on a hot dish and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the cutlet filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the base.
Flour
Thickens the water and butter into a paste that holds the cutlet shape.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, making the mixture less stiff.
Beaten egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick and form a crust.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer layer when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch in the flour set, so the cutlets keep their form and do not break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, 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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