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Lobster Patties

Lobster patties made with boiled lobster, small claws, spawn, gravy, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and puff pastry.

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the small claws and spawn in a dish until it forms a paste.

  2. Add gravy and bread crumbs to the mash.

  3. Heat the mixture over the fire until it boils.

  4. Strain the mixture until it thickens to the consistency of cream.

Make the filling

  1. Combine half of the strained mixture with the lobster, butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Warm the mixture until the butter melts, then let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a patty pan or dish with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the lobster mixture.

  3. Cover with more pastry.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. After baking, cut the top pastry cover.

  2. Warm the remaining sauce with a little butter until thickened.

  3. Pour the sauce over the patty and add a squeeze of lemon.

  4. Place the top pastry cover back on, leaving a gap to show the filling.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty filling and the sweet, rich flavour of the patty.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered crust that bakes golden around the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the filling and sauce.
Bread crumbs
Help bind and thicken the claw and spawn mash into a paste.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury body to the mash that becomes the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture until it thickens to the consistency of cream. Straining removes solids so the sauce is smooth, and the mixture must reach a creamy thickness to bind properly. Too thin and the filling stays wet; the pastry can turn soggy.

“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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