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Lobster Patties

A baked lobster patty made with lobster, gravy, bread crumbs, butter, lemon, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the small claws and spawn in a dish until smooth.

  2. Add gravy or broth and bread crumbs.

  3. Heat until boiling.

  4. Strain the mixture to a creamy thickness.

  5. Mix half of the mixture with the lobster.

Make the filling

  1. Add butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice to the lobster.

  2. Warm until butter melts.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a patty pan or dish with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the lobster mixture.

  3. Cover with more pastry.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Cut the top pastry.

  2. Warm the reserved sauce with a little butter.

  3. Pour the sauce over the patty.

  4. Garnish with lemon juice.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled lobster
Forms the main meaty filling of the patty.
Small claws and spawn
Mashed and strained into a creamy base that adds rich lobster flavor.
Gravy or broth
Adds liquid that, with bread crumbs, thickens the creamy base.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the mixture into a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, savory mouthfeel.
Puff pastry
Bakes into flaky, layered pastry that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before filling the pastry. Filling hot mixture into raw puff pastry can melt the butter layers before baking, so the pastry rises poorly and turns greasy instead of flaky.

“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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