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Lobster a LA Newburg

A creamy lobster dish with eggs, sherry, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Break the lobster meat into moderately small pieces.

  2. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs with a silver spoon and gradually add half the cream.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat, add the flour, and cook for one minute.

  2. Pour in the remaining cream and stir until the mixture thickens.

  3. Add the egg yolk mixture, lobster meat, and sliced egg whites.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and salt, then add the Sherry wine.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its sweet, delicate flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and thickens with the roux into a smooth sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed into the sauce to enrich its texture and color it; whites add body.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the roux and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with the roux. Cooking the butter and flour only one minute and adding cream too quickly can leave lumps or a thin sauce. Stirring steadily over low heat lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the cream smoothly before the other ingredients go in.

“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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