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Lobster Cutlet

A fried lobster meat cutlet coated in breadcrumbs and served with a lobster claw garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cut the lobster meat into very small pieces and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Heat the melted butter in a pan.

  3. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  4. Add the stock and one well-beaten egg.

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Stir in the lemon juice.

  7. Pour the mixture onto a buttered platter to a thickness of about 1 inch.

  8. Smooth the mixture with a knife.

  9. Let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, cut into pieces resembling cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet into the beaten egg.

  3. Coat with bread crumbs.

  4. Heat oil in a frying basket.

  5. Fry the cutlets until rich brown, about a few minutes.

  6. Drain the cutlets.

  7. Arrange them on a hot dish, garnishing each with a 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 meaty filling that gives the cutlets their flavor and body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the base cook smoothly and brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter into a base firm enough to hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and give the outer coating a golden set when fried.
Stock
Moistens the mixture and carries flavor through the base.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before cutting. A warm, soft base has not yet set, so cutting it gives ragged shapes that break apart. Cooling lets the starch in the flour thicken and firm the mixture so the cutlets hold together in the egg and crumb coating and in the hot oil.

“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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