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Lobster Outlets

A dish of fish or meat forcemeat cutlets garnished with lobster pieces, served with mashed potatoes and prawns, topped with white fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Outlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Prepare a forcemeat using the raw fish, meat, or poultry by scraping, pounding in a mortar with ½ cup of stock, and passing through a wire sieve.

  2. Pound 6 ounces of butter in a mortar, then mix in 12 ounces of bread panada.

  3. Add the pounded fish mixture to the butter and bread panada, pounding thoroughly.

  4. Incorporate 2 eggs and the yolks of 2 eggs, adding them one at a time and pounding well between each addition.

  5. Season the mixture with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg.

Cook and serve

  1. Butter cutlet pans and decorate with small pieces of reserved lobster.

  2. Fill the pans with the forcemeat and cook in water just off the boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve on a border of mashed potatoes, filling the center with prawns or other garnish, and pour white fish sauce around the base.

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

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

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and help it set firm when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cooked forcemeat tender.
Bread panada
Adds body and moisture, helping the forcemeat hold together smoothly.
Raw fish, meat, or poultry
Provides the main protein that sets into the body of the cutlets.

The step that matters

Pounding the eggs in one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and pounding between additions lets each one emulsify fully into the fat and panada, giving a smooth forcemeat that sets evenly instead of splitting or turning grainy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, potato, fish sauce, fish, bread, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, potato, fish sauce, fish, bread, egg. 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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