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Lobster and Oyster Ragout

A savory sauce of lobster and oysters simmered with onion, sherry, and brown roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Lobster and Oyster Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until it hisses.

  2. Add the lobster pieces, each squeezed with 3 drops of onion juice. Sauté the lobster pieces until smoking hot.

Cook the oysters

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. Heat the drained liquor in a saucepan while the lobster cooks.

  3. When the liquor boils, strain it.

  4. Return the strained liquor to the fire with the oysters.

  5. Cook the oysters for 2 minutes after boiling.

  6. Strain the oysters out.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Arrange the fried lobster in a deep dish.

  2. Top the lobster with the oysters.

  3. Keep warm over boiling water while reheating the oyster liquor.

  4. Season the liquor with salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and parsley.

  5. Thicken the liquor with the brown roux.

  6. Boil the mixture once.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Slowly stir in the beaten yolks.

  9. Add the sherry without returning to the fire.

  10. Pour the sauce over the oysters and lobster.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, with its firm flesh holding shape when sautéed hot.
Oysters
Add briny, tender bites that are gently poached in their own liquor.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy texture when stirred in off the heat.
Flour
Cooked in butter as a roux, it thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth sauce.
Sherry
Adds aromatic, slightly sweet and acidic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce boils after they go in, they scramble and turn grainy, so the yolks are stirred in slowly off the heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, meat, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, sherry):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, meat, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, sherry. 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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