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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, anchovy essence, cream, and lobster pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and lobster work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add fish stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then add anchovy essence and cream. Mix well and remove from heat.

Add the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into neat pieces and stir into the sauce.

  2. Set aside to warm through, but do not boil.

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. Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Cream + lobstertop 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. Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a smooth, cohesive texture.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Anchovy essence
Contributes a concentrated savoury, salty depth to the sauce.
Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavour and tender pieces in the sauce.

The step that matters

Set aside to warm through, but do not boil. Once the lobster is added, boiling can toughen its protein and make it rubbery, and it can also cause the cream to separate. Gentle heat keeps the lobster tender and the sauce smooth.

“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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