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Lobster Sauce

A rich sauce made with lobster meat, butter, flour, water, anchovy sauce, 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: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shells and cut it into small square pieces.

  2. Place the spawn in a mortar with ½ oz of butter and pound until smooth.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with ½ cup of water to form a smooth batter.

  2. Add ½ lb of fresh butter, a little salt, and ½ teaspoon of white vinegar to the batter.

  3. Heat the mixture until it thickens, simmering for 1 minute without boiling.

Finish

  1. Stir in 1 tablespoon of anchovy sauce and the lobster meat into 1 pint of the melted butter.

  2. Season with salt, cayenne, and 3 tablespoons of cream, mixing well.

  3. Heat the mixture until thoroughly hot, but do not allow it to boil.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the batter with starch so the butter and water form a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for richness, a silky mouthfeel, and a rounded flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, more velvety texture to the finished sauce.
White vinegar
Adds a little acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savoury depth that enhances the flavour of the lobster.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Once the cream is added, boiling can make the butter separate and the cream curdle or turn grainy, so the sauce loses its smooth, glossy texture. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion stable.

“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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