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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets made from lobster flesh, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, shaped, breaded, fried, and garnished with parsley.

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 ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and coral

  1. Remove all the flesh from the tail and claws of the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Wash the coral of the lobster, then dry it.

  3. Pound the coral in a mortar with 1 ounce of butter.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix 1 ounce of flour and ½ ounce of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the water to the mixture and boil it well.

  3. Stir in the coral butter, cream, and seasonings, then mix well.

  4. Add the lobster to the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool on a plate.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in egg.

  3. Coat each cutlet with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the cutlets in enough fat to cover them until golden brown.

  5. Serve the cutlets on a napkin.

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

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

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hen lobster
Provides the main meat and flavor of the cutlets.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the coral flavor through the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cooked base so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Egg
Binds the cutlets and helps the bread crumbs adhere to the outside.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture is soft and sticky, so cooling lets the starch set and firm up, making the cutlets hold their shape during dipping and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, egg, bread. 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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