Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Cutlets

A dish of lobster meat mixed with cream, egg, and seasonings, baked in a mold and chilled.

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

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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the lobster meat into small dice and season with salt and pepper.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the cream, beaten egg, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the lobster and remove from heat; add lemon juice.

  5. Pour the mixture into a flat dish and let it cool.

Shape and set

  1. Butter a tin cutlet mold and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the mold with the cooled lobster mixture and refrigerate until set.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce base and adds richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture into a stable binder that holds the lobster together.
Cream
Adds moisture and body, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Egg
Helps bind and set the mixture as it cools and chills.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before filling the mold. The cream and egg mixture must cool and chill fully so it firms up and holds its shape. Filling the mold while warm can leave the cutlets soft and prone to falling apart when released.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipes