Why it works: Walnut and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 259 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Lobster Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sauce
Pound the lobster shells exceedingly fine in a marble mortar.
Combine the pounded shells with melted butter in a saucepan.
Add the lobster meat, lemon pickle, walnut catsup, lemon slice, horseradish, beaten mace, salt, and cayenne.
Boil for one minute.
Remove the horseradish and lemon.
Serve
Serve in a sauce boat.
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.
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Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together259 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,155 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,149 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,035 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together909 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster meat
- Provides the main seafood flavour and tender bits of protein in the sauce.
- Melted butter
- Carries the flavours and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
- Lobster shells
- Pounded fine, they release savoury, aromatic compounds into the butter.
The step that matters
Boil for one minute. A brief boil is enough to combine and heat the sauce; boiling longer can cause the butter to separate and the lobster to toughen.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, lobster, lemon, walnut, horseradish):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, lobster, lemon, walnut, horseradish. 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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