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Rissoles of Lobster

A fried lobster mixture formed into balls, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and breadcrumbs, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Rissoles of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the lobster meat finely.

  2. Mix the lobster with salt, pepper, and pounded mace.

  3. Add fine bread crumbs to the mixture.

Form and coat

  1. Form the mixture into balls using melted butter.

  2. Brush the balls with egg yolk and dredge in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls until golden brown.

  2. Serve with or without gravy, and garnish with crisped parsley if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the rissoles and provides their flavour.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the lobster so the mixture holds its shape.
Melted butter
Moistens the mixture and adds richness to the rissoles.
Egg yolk
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and brown evenly.
Additional bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until golden brown. The coating browns through Maillard reactions at frying temperature, giving colour and crispness. Frying too cool makes the crumbs greasy, while frying too hot browns the outside before the centre heats through.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, pepper, mace, bread, butter, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, pepper, mace, bread, butter, 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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