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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, flour, and water, thickened with butter and flour, optionally flavored with lemon and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

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 ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster butter

  1. Remove the coral from the back and neck of the boiled lobster.

  2. Pound the coral in a mortar with double the amount of fresh butter and a little cayenne.

  3. Press the mixture through a fine sieve using the back of a spoon to make lobster butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Pick out the white meat from the lobster and tear it into flakes with two forks.

  2. Break the lobster shell into small pieces and pour ¾ cup of water over them.

  3. Simmer gently until the liquid reduces to ½ cup.

  4. Mix 2 ounces of fresh butter with 1 ounce of flour.

  5. Strain the reduced liquid over the butter and flour mixture, stirring over low heat until thickened without boiling.

  6. Stir in enough lobster butter to color the sauce brightly, add 1 tablespoon of white meat, and lemon juice if desired.

  7. Heat the sauce gently until the meat is hot, avoiding boiling.

  8. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of cream 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

Fresh butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a smooth, rich body when thickened with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the meat that is flaked into the finished sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a light background heat that rounds out the lobster flavor.

The step that matters

Thickening without boiling. Stirring the strained liquid over low heat keeps the butter and flour mixture smooth. Boiling can cause the sauce to break or turn grainy, and it can toughen the delicate lobster meat added later.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, pepper, flour, meat, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, pepper, flour, meat, 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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