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Tinned-Lobster Cakes

A fried cake made from tinned lobster, potatoes, breadcrumbs, and a sauce of lobster liquor, milk, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tinned-Lobster Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cakes

  1. Combine tinned lobster, cold boiled potatoes, sugar, ground mace, ground nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a mortar.

  2. Pound the mixture well.

  3. Divide the mixture into small portions.

  4. Shape each portion into a flat cake with floured hands.

  5. Season breadcrumbs with chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  6. Brush each cake with beaten egg.

  7. Coat each cake with seasoned breadcrumbs.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat butter in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the cakes on both sides until browned.

  3. Drain the cooked cakes on paper near the fire.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine lobster liquor, milk, anchovy sauce, and butter kneaded with flour.

  2. Season the sauce with pepper.

  3. Stir over heat until thick and boiling.

  4. Arrange the cakes on a hot dish.

  5. Garnish with fried parsley.

  6. Pour the sauce around the cakes.

  7. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned lobster
Forms the main body and flavour of the cakes.
Cold boiled potatoes
Binds the mixture and adds softness to the cakes.
Breadcrumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating on the outside of each cake.
Egg
Helps the breadcrumb coating adhere and brown during frying.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when kneaded with butter.
Milk
Gives the sauce a creamy body and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes on both sides until browned. Breadcrumb-coated cakes brown through Maillard reactions at frying heat, and the coating can scorch or stay pale if the butter is too hot or too cool, so the surface must be watched closely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, potato, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, potato, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, 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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