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Lobster Croquettes

Lobster croquettes are fried balls of lobster mixture coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs.

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

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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cold water until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and add cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice; mix well.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then take a spoonful and shape it into a croquette.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the croquette in flour, then dip in beaten egg, and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot lard 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the base and helps it bind smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the cold water into a paste that holds the croquette together.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the filling of the croquette.
Egg
Binds the flour coating and helps the bread crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape, so it can spread or break apart in the hot lard. Letting it cool firms the starch paste so the croquettes keep their form while frying.

“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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