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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets made from chopped lobster, butter, flour, milk, cream, egg, breadcrumbs, seasoned with salt and cayenne, fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster and chop it into small pieces.

  2. Pound the spawn (if any) with 1 tablespoon of butter and pass it through a fine sieve.

  3. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan, stir in the flour, add the milk, and boil well.

  4. Add the lobster, cream, spawn, cayenne, and salt to the mixture, and mix well.

  5. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool until firm enough to mold.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets, cover them with egg and breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until browned.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets in a circle, placing a piece of lobster feeler in each to represent a bone, 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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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
Enriches the sauce base and adds richness and flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the cutlet together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that sets the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Egg
Coats the cutlets so the breadcrumbs adhere and form a crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture until firm. The filling must cool enough to hold its shape when shaped. If it is still soft, the cutlets will slump and may break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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