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Lobster Croquettes

Lobster croquettes are fried balls of lobster meat mixed with bread crumbs, butter, and spices, served hot with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Croquettes

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 ↓

Lobster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the meat of a boiled lobster finely.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and powdered mace to the lobster meat.

  3. Mix in ¼ cup of bread crumbs and melted butter.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into pointed balls.

  2. Roll each ball in beaten egg, then in pulverized cracker.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in butter until golden.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling and helps it brown.
Beaten eggs
Bind the coating so the cracker crumbs stick and set when fried.
Pulverized cracker
Creates a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Coating each ball evenly in egg and cracker. Egg acts as glue for the cracker crumbs, and it sets in hot fat to form a crust. A thin or uneven coating can let crumbs fall off or leave weak spots that break open in the hot butter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, bread, pepper, butter, egg, parsley. 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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