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Dressed Fish

Lobster cutlets made with flour, butter, water, coral butter, cream, seasoning, and fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the panada

  1. Mix flour and butter over heat.

  2. Add water and boil the mixture well.

  3. Stir in coral butter, cream, and seasoning.

  4. Mix well and add lobster.

  5. Cool the mixture on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into cutlets.

  2. Egg each cutlet.

  3. Crumb each cutlet carefully.

  4. Fry the cutlets in enough fat to cover them.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets on a napkin and garnish 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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the thickened base that binds the lobster mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and carries flavour.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the cutlet filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture, keeping it tender.
Coral butter
Adds colour and concentrated shellfish flavour to the mixture.
Eggs (in the method)
Not listed as an ingredient in the record; omitted.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture on a plate. The mixture must cool and firm enough to hold its shape when cutlets are formed. If it is still warm and soft, the cutlets will slump and may fall apart during egging, crumbing and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

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