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Cutlets of Lobster, Crab, or Oyster

Cutlets made from minced lobster, crab, or oyster mixed with butter, flour, spices, and stock, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cutlets of Lobster, Crab, or Oyster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mince the lobster meat and add it to browned butter with flour, white pepper, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stir in the strong stock and heat until hot.

  3. Spoon the mixture onto a large dish in separate tablespoonfuls and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into mutton cutlet forms.

  2. Brush the cutlets with beaten egg yolks, then dip them in grated bread.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in boiling clarified beef dripping until light brown.

  2. Insert a small claw into the narrow end of each cutlet for garnish.

  3. Arrange the cutlets on a dish, overlapping slightly, and place fried parsley in the center.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 meat
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the cutlet filling.
Butter
Browned to add richness and a nutty aroma to the base mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock so the mixture holds its shape when cooled.
Strong stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth, binding the mixture into a spoonable paste.
Egg yolks
Brushed on the cutlets so the grated bread coating adheres and browns.
Grated bread
Forms a crisp, golden crust during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture cannot hold its form. Cooling lets the flour-thickened stock set so the cutlets keep their shape and do not break apart in the hot dripping.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, flour, egg, bread, beef. 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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