Name: Lobster Sauce
Ingredients: meat of a hen lobster; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 cup butter

Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

meat of a hen lobster
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup butter

Directions

Remove the meat from the shell of the hen lobster and cut it into small squares. Set aside.
Pound the spawn from under the tail smooth with 1 tablespoon of butter, then rub it through a sieve.
Melt 1 cup of butter and add it to the mixture.

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.

Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

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