Name: Lobster Cutlets
Ingredients: lobster mixture (prepared as for croquettes); melted butter; fine bread crumbs; egg; cottolene (or other frying oil); small lobster claw (for garnish)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Grease a cutlet mold with melted butter using a pastry brush.
Fill the mold with fine bread crumbs, then shake out the excess, leaving crumbs that adhere to the butter.
Fill the mold with the lobster mixture and smooth the top with a knife.
Turn the mold out onto a board covered with crumbs.
Cover the cutlet with beaten egg and then with more crumbs.
Do not butter the mold again; just fill it with crumbs each time before using.
Fry the cutlets in hot cottolene until golden brown.
Garnish each cutlet with a small lobster claw.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Lobster + breadtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together736 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).