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Fried Lobster

Lobster pieces coated in eggs and cracker crumbs, fried and served with a mustard‑lemon sauce and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fried Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Roll lobster meat in beaten eggs, then coat with fine cracker crumbs.

  2. Place coated lobster in a cold place for 1 hour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the lobster in boiling fat until light brown.

  2. Arrange on a hot platter and garnish with cresses and nasturtiums.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat egg yolks with mustard, sugar, cayenne, and salt until creamy.

  2. Gradually add salad oil while beating, thinning with lemon juice as needed.

  3. Finish with a dash of onion juice and chopped capers.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 dish, cooked until tender inside a crisp coating.
Eggs
Bind the cracker crumbs to the lobster and help the coating set when fried.
Fine cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the lobster during frying.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and mustard to create a thick, creamy sauce.
Salad oil
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it is beaten in.
French mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsified sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add salad oil while beating. Adding oil slowly while beating lets the egg yolks break it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast can split the sauce into separate oil and liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, lemon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, lemon. 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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