Why it works: Lobster and truffle work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 155 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the salpicon
In a saucepan, combine one pint of good white sauce, four mushrooms, one truffle, and one-quarter pint of diced lobster meat from the claw, which is best.
Thicken well by cooking for five minutes.
Add a liaison of two egg yolks and serve.
Substitutes
The meat of three crawfish or six shrimps may be used instead of lobster.
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. See the original page.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Lobster + truffletop 9% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together155 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sauce + lobstertop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,095 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Meat + truffletop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together527 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Lobster + meattop 6% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together909 recipes
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Truffle + eggtop 9% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,598 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White sauce
- Forms the creamy base that holds the other ingredients together.
- Lobster meat
- Provides the main seafood flavour and tender bite of the salpicon.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the sauce as a liaison, giving it a richer, smoother texture.
- Mushrooms (in the method)
- Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the mixture.
- Truffle
- Adds a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolk liaison. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble and curdle if the mixture boils. Add them off the heat or over very low heat, and stir constantly.
“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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