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Sauce

Aurora Sauce

A creamy sauce made from lobster spawn, butter, white sauce, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Aurora Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Pound the lobster spawn with the butter in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Season with cayenne and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the white sauce and lemon juice.

  2. Press the spawn through a fine sieve into the sauce.

  3. Heat gently, ensuring it does not boil.

  4. Simmer for 2 minutes.

  5. If spawn is unavailable, substitute with pressed hard-boiled egg yolks.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 spawn
Gives the sauce its colour and rich lobster flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying the flavour through the sauce.
White sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it thickness and a creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and butter flavours.

The step that matters

Heat gently, without boiling. Egg-based and butter-rich sauces can curdle or separate when overheated. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth and the texture even.

“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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