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Lobster or Salmon Cutlets

A fried cutlet made from lobster or salmon mixed with flour, cream, and spices, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 or Salmon Cutlets

8 cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the fish into small pieces.

  2. Melt butter in a pan, then stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add cold water and stir vigorously until it boils.

  4. Stir in the cream, cayenne, salt, and carmine for color.

  5. Add the fish and mix well, then transfer to a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide the mixture into 8 equal pieces and shape into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown, then drain well.

Serve

  1. Insert a small piece of macaroni into each cutlet to represent a bone.

  2. Serve arranged in a circle 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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Lobster or salmon
Provides the main filling and flavor of the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a binding paste for the filling.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the filling's texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and water until boiling. Adding cold water to the cooked flour and stirring until it boils gelatinizes the starch, thickening the mixture. If it stays lumpy or does not reach a boil, the filling will be too loose to shape into cutlets.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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