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Lobster Rissoles

A dish of fried lobster balls made with minced lobster, egg yolks, flour, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Extract and mince the meat of the boiled lobster as finely as possible.

  2. Mix the minced lobster with the pounded coral and pounded egg yolks.

  3. Season the mixture with cayenne pepper, powdered mace, and coarse sea salt.

Make the batter and shape

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add the milk and flour to make a batter.

  2. For each egg, use 2 large tablespoons of milk and 1 large teaspoon of flour.

  3. Beat the batter well, then gradually mix in the lobster mixture until stiff enough to form oval balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot salad oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the rissoles set and hold their shape.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and add richness and a smooth, binding texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the lobster mixture holds together when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, keeping the rissoles tender inside.

The step that matters

Beating the batter and folding in the lobster. The batter must be beaten well and the lobster mixture added gradually so it becomes stiff enough to hold an oval shape. If it stays loose, the balls can break apart in the hot oil.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, egg, pepper, milk, flour. 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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