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Lobster Cutlets

Lobster cutlets are breaded pieces of lobster meat mixed with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, then 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 lobster

  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.

Make the mixture

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

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

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

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets, cover them with egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until nicely browned.

Serve

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and the spawn paste.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the cutlets together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving a smooth, creamy body.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture until firm. The mixture must be chilled enough to firm up before shaping, because starch-thickened sauce stays soft while warm. If it is shaped too soon, the cutlets can slump and break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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