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Lobster À LA Newburg

A lobster dish with butter, salt, cayenne or paprika, sherry or Madeira, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 À LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a chafing dish, combine lobster meat, butter, salt, and cayenne or paprika.

  2. Stir lightly for 3 minutes until heated.

  3. Add sherry or Madeira and cook for another 3 minutes.

  4. Mix in beaten egg yolks diluted with cream, stirring constantly for 1 minute until the egg sets.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its sweet, delicate flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the warm lobster.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aromatic depth and acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream-based sauce as they set, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness, forming the body of the sauce with the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble into curds. Stir constantly over moderate heat once the yolks and cream are added, and stop heating as soon as the sauce coats a spoon.

“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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