Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Cutlet

A fried lobster cutlet coated in cracker crumbs, served with sauce.

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

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 mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter and flour to make a drawn sauce.

  2. Add the lobster meat and mix well.

  3. Stir in mustard, minced parsley, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then form it into cutlets.

Bread and fry

  1. Bread the cutlets in cracker meal and dip in beaten egg.

  2. Fry the cutlets until they are a nice brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, tomato, or Béarnaise sauce.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body and flavor of the cutlet.
Butter
Enriches the drawn sauce and adds richness and fat to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a drawn sauce that binds the lobster together.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the cracker meal crust adheres and helps them brown.
Cracker meal
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming cutlets. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape and may slump or break apart. Cooling lets the butter and flour sauce firm up so the cutlets keep their form through breading and frying.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, flour, mustard, pepper, nutmeg. 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 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes