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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster, butter, flour, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and boiling water, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lobster meat into small dice.

  2. Pound the coral (the lobster's roe) with 1 tablespoon of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and remaining butter to form a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water, pounded coral, butter, and cayenne pepper to the paste.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 5 minutes, then strain it over the diced lobster.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil once, then serve it over 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth body and mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth paste that gives it body.
Lobster
Supplies the main meat and flavor of the sauce.
Coral (in the method)
Adds lobster roe flavor and color to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the paste. Adding liquid gradually to the flour and butter paste, while stirring, keeps it smooth. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps of starch that do not dissolve evenly, so the sauce thickens unevenly.

“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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