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Lobster Cutlets

A dish of lobster meat formed into cutlets, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream 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 ↓

Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster and chop it into small pieces.

  2. Pound the spawn (if any) with 1 oz. of butter and pass it through a fine sieve.

  3. Melt 1 oz. of butter in a small saucepan, stir in the flour, add the milk, and boil well.

  4. Add the lobster, cream, spawn, cayenne, and salt to the mixture and mix well.

  5. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool until firm enough to mold.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets, cover them with egg and breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until browned.

Arrange and garnish

  1. Arrange the cutlets in a circle, placing a piece of lobster feeler in each to represent a bone, 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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the flavour and adds richness to the base sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the cutlets together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Egg
Binds the coating so the breadcrumbs adhere and the outside sets when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture until firm. The filling must be cool and set enough to hold its shape. If shaped while still hot and soft, the cutlets will slump and break apart in the hot fat.

“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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