Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Patties

A pastry shell filled with a lobster mixture seasoned with salt, cayenne, mace, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

Prepare the shells

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry and line deep patty pans with it.

  3. Bake the pastry shells until golden and set aside.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the lobsters until cooked, then extract and finely mince the meat.

  2. Mix the minced lobster with the coral, grated egg yolk, salt, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream, butter, or salad oil.

  4. Place the mixture in a stew pan, add a little water, and steam until just boiling.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove the baked pastry shells from the pans and fill them with the lobster mixture.

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Puff pastry
Its layers puff and turn crisp and golden in the oven, forming the shell.
Lobsters
Provide the main meat, giving the filling its flavour and tender texture.
Cream, butter, or salad oil
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the lobster filling rich and from drying out.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Grated into the mixture, it adds richness and helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Steaming the filling until just boiling. Lobster meat turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so heating it gently only until just boiling keeps it tender and juicy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes