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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets made with minced lobster, butter, flour, egg yolks, and bread crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lobster base

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

  2. Stir in the flour and cook the mixture for a minute.

  3. Add the minced lobster, parsley, and stock and mix the ingredients well.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat and stir in the egg yolks.

  5. Spread the mixture out and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, cut the mixture into cutlet shapes.

  2. Dip each cutlet in beaten eggs and coat each cutlet with bread crumbs.

  3. Let the cutlets stand for 1 hour.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Serve the cutlets with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 flesh
Forms the main body and flavour of the cutlet.
Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a base that holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set when cooked.
Beaten eggs
Help the bread crumbs adhere to each cutlet.
Fine baked bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft base is too loose to cut and hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch and egg yolks firm up, so the cutlets keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, pepper, butter, flour, egg, bread. 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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