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Sauce

To Make Sauce for the Cod's Head

A sauce made from lobster, salt, butter, lemon pickle, walnut catsup, lemon, horseradish, mace, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,034 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, tree nuts, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Stick a skewer in the vent of the lobster's tail to keep water out.

  2. Boil water with a handful of salt.

  3. When the water is boiling, add the lobster and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. If the lobster has spawn, remove it and pound it finely in a mortar.

  5. Mix the pounded spawn with melted butter.

  6. Remove the lobster meat and pull it into bits.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the lobster bits to the butter along with lemon pickle, walnut catsup, lemon slice, horseradish slices, beaten mace, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 minute.

  3. Remove the horseradish and lemon.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce in a sauce boat.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Meat + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,034 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + meattop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together909 recipes
  3. Butter + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,819 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + meattop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Supplies the meat and spawn that form the body of the sauce.
Melted butter
Carries the flavours and gives the sauce a rich, smooth, fatty texture.
Walnut catsup
Adds a dark, savoury depth and tang to the sauce.
Lemon pickle
Contributes acidity and sharp, salty flavour to balance the rich butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, meat, lemon, walnut, mace):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, meat, lemon, walnut, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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