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Good Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster coral, butter, cayenne, mace, salt, anchovy essence, cream, and diced lobster flesh.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Good Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and coral

  1. Select a perfectly fresh hen lobster.

  2. Split the tail carefully and remove the inside coral.

  3. Pound half of the coral in a mortar with less than an ounce of butter, rub through a hair-sieve, and set aside.

  4. Dice the firm flesh of the lobster into pieces not less than half an inch in size.

Make the sauce

  1. Make enough melted butter to supply the sauce quantity required.

  2. Season the butter slightly with anchovy essence, cayenne, mace, and salt.

  3. Add a few spoonfuls of rich cream to the butter.

  4. Gradually mix a small portion of the cream mixture with the pounded coral until liquefied.

  5. Pour the liquefied mixture into the sauce and stir well.

  6. Immediately add the diced lobster flesh to the sauce.

  7. Heat the sauce over the fire without allowing it to boil.

  8. Use the remaining coral for sauce if no portion is needed elsewhere.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

108Calories
0 gProtein
12 gFat
1 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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

  1. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Lobster (in the method)
Firm flesh provides the main body and texture of the sauce.
Coral (in the method)
Pounded coral colours the sauce and adds its rich, distinctive flavour.
Butter
Forms the fat base that carries the flavours and gives the sauce its smooth richness.
Cream (in the method)
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's body.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Boiling can cause the emulsion of butter and cream to break, leaving the sauce greasy and grainy, and can toughen the diced lobster flesh.

“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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