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Sauce

Lobster Sauce a LA Creme

A lobster sauce made with butter, cream, mace, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,050 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into slices the size of half-crown pieces and place them in a stewpan.

  2. Pound the soft and white parts of the lobster with 1 ounce of butter and rub through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour 10 tablespoons of melted butter and 2 tablespoons of cream over the lobster slices in the stewpan.

  2. Add ½ blade of mace, ¼ teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.

  3. Warm gently until just before boiling, then add the lobster mixture and 2 tablespoons of thick cream.

  4. Shake the stewpan over the heat until everything is hot and ready to serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together4,009 recipes

Mace and pepper share little aroma chemistry, yet 12,257 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the body of the sauce once pounded and sieved.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warming until just before boiling. Cream and butter emulsions can split or curdle if they boil hard, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and glossy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, cream, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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