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Crab and Lobster Cutlets

A dish of minced crab or lobster meat formed into cutlets, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab and Lobster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster or crab and mince the meat.

  2. In a pan, brown the butter.

  3. Add the flour, pepper, salt, and cayenne to the pan.

  4. Stir in the strong stock.

  5. Heat the mixture until hot.

  6. Spoon the mixture onto a large dish and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Brush the cutlets with the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Dip the cutlets in the bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the cutlets in clarified beef dripping until light brown.

  5. Arrange the cutlets on a dish with fried parsley in the center.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

Meat of lobster or crab
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the cutlet filling.
Butter
Browned to add richness and a nutty aroma to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter into a mixture firm enough to shape.
Strong stock
Moistens the filling and adds savoury depth.
Egg yolk
Brushed on as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch from the flour set the mixture so the cutlets keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pepper, egg, bread, beef. 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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