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Common Lobster Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with anchovies, mace, cayenne, and lobster flesh.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster 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 ↓

Common Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine melted butter, essence of anchovies, mace, and cayenne in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then stir in the cream if using.

Add the lobster and serve

  1. Add the diced lobster flesh and keep the saucepan by the fire until heated through, without boiling again.

  2. Serve very hot.

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. Cream + lobstertop 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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Melted butter
Carries the flavours and gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's texture.
Lobster flesh
Provides the main seafood flavour and tender bite.

The step that matters

Heating the lobster without boiling again. Lobster is delicate and turns tough and rubbery when overheated. Gently warming it in the sauce until just heated through keeps it tender, and boiling a cream-based sauce can cause it to separate.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, cream, lobster):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, lobster. 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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