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Lobster Cutlet

A lobster cutlet made with lobster, cream, butter, lemon juice, flour, egg, and cracker crumbs, pan‑fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir in the lobster juice and add a little milk if needed.

  3. Boil the mixture while stirring continuously until well combined.

  4. Add the cream and lemon juice, then stir in the finely chopped lobster.

  5. Beat the mixture until smooth and let it cool until set.

Shape and coat

  1. Divide the mixture into portions and shape into cutlets.

  2. Insert a small piece of macaroni into each cutlet to resemble bones.

  3. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg and coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in butter 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the cutlet filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and lobster juice into a firm base that holds its shape.
Butter
Enriches the base and browns the outside of the cutlets when fried.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and smooth.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres and crisps during frying.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Let the base cool until set. The mixture must be thick and firm before shaping; if it is too warm or loose, the cutlets will not hold their shape and may split or fall apart in the frying step.

“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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