Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Croquettes

Lobster croquettes are fried balls of lobster meat mixed with butter, lemon, flour, milk, and spices, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lobster Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the lobster meat, nutmeg, salt, pepper, butter, lemon juice, flour, and milk in a bowl.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main flavor and the protein that gives the croquettes body.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture so it holds its shape when formed.
Milk
Adds moisture and, with the flour, forms a binding sauce for the croquettes.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating and sets during frying to hold it in place.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the croquettes in hot oil. The mixture is soft and only lightly set, so oil that is not hot enough lets the coating absorb grease and fall apart. Hot oil quickly sets the egg and crumb crust and browns the outside before the centre overheats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, milk. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes