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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are formed from lobster pieces, coated in breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add milk, salt, and pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Cut lobster into pieces.

  5. Mix lobster pieces into the saucepan.

  6. Add lemon juice.

  7. Transfer mixture to a plate.

  8. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Form mixture into cutlets using a little flour.

  2. Beat the egg on a plate.

  3. Roll cutlets in flour.

  4. Roll cutlets in egg.

  5. Roll cutlets in breadcrumbs.

  6. Attach a small piece of macaroni to each end of the cutlets to represent the bone.

Fry

  1. Fry the cutlets in boiling fat 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.

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding white sauce that holds the cutlets together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the breadcrumbs stick and form a crisp shell.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose sauce cannot hold its shape and will slump or split when coated and fried. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up enough to form cutlets that keep their shape in hot fat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, milk, pepper, 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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