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Lobster Patties

A savory dish of minced lobster mixed with butter, flour, stock, lemon, salt, and cayenne, formed into patties and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in enough flour to thicken the mixture.

  3. Add the stock or hot water and lemon juice, then season with salt and cayenne.

  4. Let the mixture simmer briefly, then add the minced lobster meat.

  5. Heat thoroughly, then fill patty cases with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a moment, then serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a binding sauce that holds the lobster together.
Stock or hot water
Provides the liquid that loosens the thickened base into a moist filling.
Lobster meat
Supplies the main flavor and tender texture of the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and mixed in evenly; lumps or raw flour taste pasty and the sauce will not thicken smoothly.

“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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