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Lobster Patties

Lobster patties are made by mixing boiled lobster meat with egg, spices, and fat, then filling baked puff pastry crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lobster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Bake puff pastry in patty pans until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the meat of the boiled lobsters finely.

  2. Mix the minced lobster with the mashed coral and grated hard boiled egg.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Moisten the mixture with cream, fresh butter, or salad oil.

  5. Place the mixture in a stew pan with a little water, bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked pastry crusts with the lobster mixture.

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace 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

Puff pastry
Bakes into a flaky, golden case that holds the filling.
Boiled lobsters
Provides the main meaty filling and its sweet, delicate flavour.
Hard boiled egg
Adds body and richness to the filling, helping it hold together.
Cream or fresh butter or salad oil
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic citrus notes that lift the lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Moisten and heat the lobster mixture gently. Lobster meat is delicate and dries out or turns tough when overheated. Adding fat and bringing the mixture only to a boil, then removing it from heat, keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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