Name: Lobster Sauce Simplified
Ingredients: 10 tablespoons milk; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper to taste; 2 cloves; ½ blade of mace; 2 walnuts-sized butter; a little flour; 2 tablespoons cream (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce Simplified

Ingredients

Directions

Put the lobster slices in a stewpan with the milk.
Add pepper, salt, cayenne, cloves, and mace.
Heat on the fire until just before boiling.
Mix the butter with a little flour and add it to the pan.
Shake over the fire until it thickens.
If available, stir in the cream and serve hot.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,592 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, clove, walnut, butter, flour, cream):

Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, clove, walnut, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.