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Lobster with Cecil Sauce

A lobster dish served with a sauce made from butter, flour, cream, stock, egg yolk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster with Cecil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the meat of the lobster into 1-inch bits.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Slowly add the cream and stock, stirring until combined.

  3. Add the lobster, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk and chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve in paper cases or individual dishes.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 protein and sweet, tender meat for the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour to start the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a silky body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat. If it is added while the sauce is boiling, it can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first lets it thicken smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, egg. 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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