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Lobster Croquettes

A dish of lobster meat mixed with cream and butter, shaped into croquettes, coated in crackers, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Croquettes

Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the lobster meat and fat very fine.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mace, and butter to the lobster.

  3. Boil the cream and stir in ¼ pound of butter and 3 tablespoons of flour.

  4. Combine the cream mixture with the lobster.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in the yolk of egg and coat with rolled crackers.

  3. Fry in butter until light brown and serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and fat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Cream
Makes a moist, rich base that holds the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the filling can be shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown when fried.
Egg yolk
Binds the coating so the rolled crackers stick to each croquette.

The step that matters

Combine the cream mixture with the lobster. The cream sauce must be thick enough to hold its shape once cooled. If it is too thin, the croquettes will be loose and may break or fall apart during dipping and frying.

Swap the mace

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

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

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