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Lobster Patties

A baked pastry dish containing a mixture of boiled lobster, claws, spawn, gravy, bread crumbs, butter, lemon, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the small claws and spawn in a dish until smooth.

  2. Add gravy and bread crumbs to the mash.

  3. Heat the mixture over the fire until it boils.

  4. Strain the mixture to a creamy consistency.

  5. Mix half of the creamy mixture with the lobster.

  6. Add butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice to the lobster mixture and warm until the butter melts.

  7. Cool the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a patty pan or dish with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the lobster mixture.

  3. Cover with more pastry.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Once baked, cut the top pastry.

  2. Warm the remaining sauce with a little butter.

  3. Pour the sauce over the patty.

  4. Garnish with lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small claws and spawn of the lobster
Smooth purée that gives the filling its rich, creamy body and flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, silky mouthfeel as it melts.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mash, helping it reach a creamy consistency.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth, helping bind the mixture into a smooth sauce.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered crust that rises and browns in the oven around the filling.
Boiled lobster
Provides the main chunky texture and sweet, delicate seafood flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before filling the pastry. If the warm filling goes straight into puff pastry, the butter melts out and the pastry layers can soften instead of puffing crisply in the oven. Cooling firms the filling so the pastry keeps its structure while baking.

“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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