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Lobster Newburg

A creamy lobster dish with butter, flour, cream, sherry, brandy, and spices served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into neat pieces.

  2. In a bowl, boil and mash the egg yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, blend the butter and flour together, then add the cream and stir until boiling.

  2. Gradually add the cream mixture to the mashed yolks, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the salt, pepper, and nutmeg to the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster pieces and heat over hot water until thoroughly warmed.

  2. Stir in the sherry and brandy just before serving.

  3. Serve immediately on toast.

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

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 body and sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream by forming a starch-based base with the butter.
Cream
Forms the smooth, rich body of the sauce and adds moisture.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity to the sauce.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth that lifts the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream mixture to the mashed yolks. Adding the hot cream slowly while stirring constantly warms the yolks gently. Dumping it in at once can scramble the eggs, leaving the sauce lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

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