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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are breaded lobster meat coated in a creamy sauce, then fried.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and cream.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Remove from heat.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick the lobster from the shell and mince the lobster.

  2. Season the lobster and add the lemon juice to the lobster.

  3. Mix the lobster thoroughly with the sauce.

  4. Spread the mixture on a dish to cool.

  5. Once firm, shape into cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the cutlets with egg.

  2. Roll the cutlets in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in a basket until golden brown.

  4. Garnish with fried parsley.

  5. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the cutlets and provides the flavor of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a sauce that binds the lobster.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour form a smooth roux.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, making the filling softer and moister.
Egg
Brushed on the cutlets so the bread crumbs stick and brown evenly.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool and firm before shaping. A warm, loose sauce-and-lobster mixture will not hold its shape. Chilling lets the starch in the flour-thickened sauce set, so the cutlets keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, milk, flour, butter, pepper, 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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