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Lobster Sauce Simplified

A creamy sauce made with lobster, milk, cream, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce Simplified

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Put lobster slices into a stewpan with milk.

  2. Add pepper, salt, cayenne, cloves, and mace.

  3. Let it boil.

  4. Add butter mixed with flour.

  5. Shake over the fire until thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream.

  2. Heat until hot before serving.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the liquid and butter adds richness and smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the finished sauce.
Lobster (in the method)
Provides the main flavor and seafood character of the sauce.

The step that matters

Shaking in the butter and flour. Flour needs to be cooked while the liquid simmers, or it tastes raw and thickens unevenly. Adding it as a paste with butter helps it disperse without lumps, and stirring or shaking keeps it from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, clove, walnut, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, clove, walnut, butter, flour, 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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