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Croutes of Lobster

Croutes of Lobster are bread rounds filled with lobster paste, topped with egg, tartare sauce, olives, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Croutes of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croutes

  1. Prepare round pieces of bread, ½ inch thick and 1 inch wide, and stamp out the center with a small cutter.

  2. Fry the bread in clarified butter until golden, then drain and let cool.

Fill and serve

  1. Place a little small cress in the bottom of each croute.

  2. Fill each croute with lobster paste and top with a thin slice of hard-boiled egg.

  3. Add more lobster paste to form a pyramid shape on top.

  4. Just before serving, mask each croute with a spoonful of stiff tartare sauce.

  5. Garnish with stoned Spanish olives and 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. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the filling.
Clarified butter
Fries the bread to a golden, crisp surface with rich flavour.
Lobster paste
Provides the main savoury filling, shaped into a pyramid on top.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a soft, mild contrast in texture and flavour beneath the sauce.
Stiff tartare sauce
Masks the top with a tangy, creamy layer that moistens the filling.

The step that matters

Frying the bread. Bread fried in clarified butter must reach a golden colour without burning. Clarified butter has no milk solids, so it tolerates higher heat and browns the bread evenly, while draining and cooling keep the case crisp enough to hold the filling.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, lobster, egg, sauce, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, lobster, egg, sauce, olive. 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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