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Lobster Cutlet

A savory cutlet made from lobster meat, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, coated in egg and breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove all the flesh from the tail and claws of the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Wash and dry the coral of the lobster, then pound it in a mortar with 1 ounce of butter and rub it through a fine sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, mix 1 ounce of flour and ½ ounce of butter over heat, then add the water and boil the mixture well.

  2. Stir in the coral butter, cream, and seasoning, then mix well and add the lobster.

  3. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool, then shape into cutlets.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each cutlet in egg and coat with bread crumbs, then fry in enough fat to cover them.

  2. Serve the cutlets on a napkin and garnish with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the coral flavour through the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a paste that binds the cutlet mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to each cutlet.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must cool and firm enough to hold its shape; shaping it warm makes it soft and sticky, so the cutlets can break apart during coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, egg, bread. 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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