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Lobster Cutlets

A dish of lobster meat formed into cutlets, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Cutlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster for 20 minutes, then twist off the head and remove the coral from the back.

  2. Beat the coral with ½ ounce of butter in a mortar, then rub it through a wire sieve until smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan, add flour and cold water, stirring until it boils. Boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add the coral, cream, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and cayenne. Mix well.

  3. Cut the lobster into small pieces and combine with the sauce mixture. Cool for 1 hour.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide into 5 pieces and shape into cutlets. Dip in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot clarified fat or lard for 2 minutes. Drain on kitchen paper and serve on a hot napkin garnished with lobster claws.

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. 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 body of the cutlets and their rich seafood flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds fat for flavour and a tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the cold water and butter into a binding sauce that holds the cutlets together.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crust.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Cool the lobster mixture for 1 hour before shaping. Cooling lets the flour-thickened sauce set firm, so the cutlets hold their shape and do not fall apart when dipped and fried.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Raisinfits less 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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