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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are shaped pieces of lobster meat coated in a buttery sauce, fried and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and milk, mix well, and boil for three minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, and cream.

  4. Separate the lobster head from the body and remove the coral.

  5. Pound the coral with ½ oz of butter, pass through a sieve, and add to the sauce.

  6. Cut the lobster flesh into pieces and mix with the sauce.

Shape and fry

  1. Cool the mixture, then shape into cutlets.

  2. Insert a small piece of claw into each cutlet to represent a bone.

  3. Dip each cutlet in egg and breadcrumbs, then fry in hot oil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a circle with 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and carries the coral colour and taste.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the lobster together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and softness.
Hen lobster
Provides the main flesh and the coral, which adds colour and rich flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose sauce cannot hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch-thickened mixture firm up so the cutlets keep their form when dipped and fried.

“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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