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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster meat, white stock, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all the meat and soft parts from the lobster body and chop finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chopped lobster meat with 1½ pints of white stock.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix ¼ pound of butter with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the saucepan.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and serve in an oyster dish as a sauce for boiled fish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the lobster flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the sauce coats the fish rather than running off.
Lobster meat
Supplies the main seafood flavour and sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the sauce. Blending butter and flour until smooth before adding it prevents lumps, because flour clumps when it meets hot liquid without being evenly coated in fat. Stirring as it goes helps the sauce thicken evenly.

“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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