Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Sauce

A rich sauce made from lobster meat, cream, anchovy sauce, and seasonings, simmered gently.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Allspice and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 654 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shell and claws, breaking it into small pieces.

  2. If using a hen lobster, pound the coral and spawn in a mortar.

  3. Boil the broken shells in ½ cup of water or veal broth with allspice, mace, whole pepper, and horseradish until the flavors are extracted.

  4. Strain the liquid and combine it with the lobster in a stew pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add cream (or melted butter), anchovy sauce, and lemon juice.

  2. Gently simmer for about five minutes without boiling.

  3. Season with cayenne and salt while simmering, then serve in sauce boats.

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. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 flavor and the substance of the sauce.
Cream or melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savory depth that rounds out the seafood flavor.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp aroma that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gently simmer without boiling. Boiling a cream or butter sauce can cause it to separate and turn greasy or grainy. Keeping it at a gentle simmer lets the flavors blend while the emulsion stays smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, veal, allspice, pepper, horseradish, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, veal, allspice, pepper, horseradish, 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.

More lobster sauce recipes

Newburg 3 See all 230 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes