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Lobster Chops

A dish of boiled lobster mixed with butter, flour, cream, egg yolks, spices, baked into chops, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster mixture

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan until bubbling.

  2. Sprinkle in 2 ounces of flour and cook.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of boiling cream and add the lobster dice, then stir until scalding hot.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, nutmeg, red pepper, and salt to taste.

  6. Return to heat and stir until the eggs are set.

Shape and coat

  1. Grease a platter.

  2. Spread the mixture to a depth of ½ inch and allow to cool.

  3. Shape the mixture into chops.

  4. Coat each chop in bread crumbs, dip each chop in egg, then coat again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Stick a claw in each chop before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 flavor and the bulk of the chop filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce base and adds richness to the mixture.
Flour
Cooked with butter to thicken the cream into a stable base that holds the chops together.
Cream
Forms the liquid base that gives the mixture a smooth, rich body.
Egg yolks
Set on heating to bind the mixture so it holds its shape for chops.

The step that matters

Return to heat and stir until the eggs are set. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but overheating can curdle them. Stir gently over low heat until the mixture thickens, then stop, so the filling stays smooth enough to shape and hold together when fried.

“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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