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Lobster Cutlets

A dish of diced lobster mixed with cream, egg, and seasonings, formed into cutlets, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Season the diced lobster meat with salt and pepper.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter and add the flour, stirring until smooth. Add the cream, beaten egg, and more salt and pepper, then bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the lobster meat and remove from heat, then add lemon juice.

  4. Pour the mixture into a flat dish and let it cool.

Shape the cutlets

  1. Butter a tin cutlet mold and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

  2. Press the cooled mixture into the mold and turn it out.

  3. Repeat until all the mixture is used, buttering and crumbing the mold each time.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling fat for about 2 minutes.

  3. Insert a small claw into each cutlet to resemble a bone.

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its flavor.
Butter
Enriches the flavor and adds richness to the flour base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stiff base that holds the cutlet together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and forms a coating that holds the bread crumbs.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm mixture is soft and sticky, so it will not hold its shape in the mold. Cooling lets the flour-thickened base firm up so the cutlets keep their form during frying.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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