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Lobster Patties

A pastry-wrapped lobster mixture baked into patties.

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 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.

Prepare the pastry

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

  2. Bake the puff pastry in patty pans until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Mince the lobster meat and mix with the mashed coral and grated eggs.

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

  3. Moisten the mixture with cream, butter, or salad oil.

  4. Place the mixture in a stew pan with a little water and bring to a boil.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove from heat and fill the baked pastry crusts.

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 flaky, golden case that holds the filling.
Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives it its flavor.
Lobster coral
Adds rich, savory flavor and a deeper color to the filling.
Hard boiled eggs
Grated eggs add body and a soft, binding texture to the filling.
Cream, butter, or salad oil
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the filling soft and rich.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture before heating. Too little cream, butter, or oil leaves the filling dry and crumbly, while the gentle heating in water only warms it through. Adding fat evenly gives a moist, cohesive filling that holds together inside the pastry.

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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