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Lobster a LA Newburg

A creamy lobster dish with butter, flour, sherry, and sweet thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 a LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the meat and cut it into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the cream over the lobster meat.

  2. Add the melted butter and flour.

  3. Warm the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth and creamy.

  4. Stir in the sherry.

Serve

  1. Serve in a chafing dish.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 meat, which is cooked and then folded into the sauce.
Cream
Supplies richness and moisture, forming the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and carries flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a subtle sweet-tart flavor to the cream.

The step that matters

Warm the sauce gently while stirring constantly. Flour thickens the cream as its starch swells with heat. Low heat and constant stirring keep the sauce smooth and stop it scorching or clumping on the bottom of the pan.

“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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