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Cardinal Sauce

A sauce made from lobster, stock, velouté, anchovy sauce, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster stock

  1. Remove lobster flesh and finely chop the body part.

  2. Add chopped lobster to ½ pint stock and simmer slowly to extract essence.

  3. Rub 2 tablespoons live spawn through a sieve with 1 teaspoon water and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the stock from the lobsters and add 1 pint velouté sauce and 1 tablespoon anchovy sauce.

  2. Stir and reduce mixture over heat until thickened to double cream consistency.

  3. Strain sauce through cloth into clean pan.

  4. Cut lobster meat into ¼ inch pieces, add cayenne pepper, and gently stir into sauce.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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

Lobsters
Provide the main flavour and the lobster meat that is folded into the sauce.
Live spawn
Adds a rich colour and a deeper, roe-based flavour to the sauce.
Velouté sauce
Forms the thickened base that the reduced sauce is built on.
Stock
Carries the lobster essence and adds liquid to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce until thickened to double cream consistency. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while over-reducing can make it too thick or salty, so check the texture as it nears double cream.

“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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