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Lobster Cutlets

A baked lobster cutlet made with lobster, flour, eggs, butter, milk, anchovy essence, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils and thickens.

  4. Mix in the anchovy essence, egg yolk, and minced lobster.

Fill and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture gently.

  2. Fill cutlet molds with the mixture and place a small piece of butter on top of each.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift out and serve on lace paper, garnished with 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Minced lobster
Provides the main seafood flavor and substance of the cutlet.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stable base that holds the cutlet together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set in the oven.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and to the top of each cutlet.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid that is thickened by the flour into a smooth sauce-like base.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that makes the cutlets light. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out this air, leaving dense, heavy cutlets that do not rise well in the oven.

“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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