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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from water, mace, pepper, mustard seed, salt, butter, flour, and cooked lobster.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 1 pint of water with mace, whole black pepper, and mustard seed until sharp.

  2. Strain the water and return it to the pot.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and rub in butter with flour.

  4. Cut up the lobster and dress it with the sauce.

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 + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mustard + lobstertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and it coats the flour so the starch can thicken smoothly.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens the liquid into a sauce with body when heated.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the infused water.
Whole black pepper
Adds a sharp, aromatic heat to the infused water.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor to the infused water.
Cooked lobster
Is the main protein, served dressed in the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid unless its starch granules are first coated in fat. Working the butter and flour together into a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, butter, flour, lobster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

“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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