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Lobster a LA Newbrrg

A lobster dish cooked with butter, sherry, brandy, egg yolks, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Lobster a LA Newbrrg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in the chafing dish.

  3. Add the lobster pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, milk, and flour.

  2. Add this mixture to the lobster and let it come to a boil.

  3. Stir in the sherry and brandy.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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.

  1. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

Lobster
Provides the main body and sweet, firm meat of the dish.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Thickens the milk and yolk mixture into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the lobster cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the yolks and flour thicken.
Sherry
Adds aromatic acidity and depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the yolk mixture to a boil. Egg yolks thicken the sauce through gentle heat. If they overheat or curdle, they cannot be smoothed back, so this step is where the sauce most often goes wrong.

“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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