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Lobster Fatties

A pastry dish filled with minced lobster meat, eggs, and seasonings, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Fatties

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.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake puff pastry in patty pans until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the lobster meat.

  2. Mix the minced lobster meat with the mashed coral and grated hard boiled eggs.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, cayenne, mace or nutmeg, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Moisten the mixture with cream, fresh butter, or salad oil.

  5. Place the mixture in a stew pan with a little water.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  7. Remove from heat.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked pastry crusts with the mixture.

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

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Puff pastry
Bakes into a golden, flaky case that holds the filling.
Lobster meat
Provides the main flavour and the tender, delicate body of the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Grated yolk and white add body and a rich, soft texture to the filling.
Cream, fresh butter, or salad oil
Adds moisture and fat so the filling stays soft and smooth rather than dry.

The step that matters

Bringing the filling to a boil. Once the mixture has been moistened, bringing it to a boil and then removing it from heat sets the filling. Boiling too long can make the lobster tough and dry, so it should be taken off the heat promptly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, egg, pepper, lemon, cream. 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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