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Lobster Croquettes

A fried appetizer of lobster meat mixed with roux, egg, lemon, and spices, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Lobster Croquettes

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Slowly pour in the hot milk, stirring until thickened.

  4. Stir in the lobster meat, beaten egg, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

  5. If the mixture is too soft, add a little sifted bread crumbs.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll the croquettes in bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the croquettes in egg.

  4. Coat the croquettes again in crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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).

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

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the milk into a binding base.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form the roux and adds richness.
Hot milk
Liquid that gelatinises with the roux into a thick, creamy binder.
Lobster meat
Main flavour and bulk of the filling.
Beaten egg
Sets when heated, helping hold the croquettes together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk roux. The roux must be cooked smooth and the milk added slowly while stirring, or lumps form and the mixture stays too loose to shape. A properly thickened base firms as it cools, which keeps the croquettes from falling apart 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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