Why it works: Lobster and meat 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
Directions
Prepare the lobster
Boil the lobster and extract the meat from the shell.
Beat the lobster meat in a mortar.
Rub it through a sieve into a saucepan.
Make the sauce
Add velouté and broth, and mix well.
Incorporate butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Stew for 10 minutes.
Serve
Serve with boiled fresh fish.
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.
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Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together909 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,594 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,609 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster meat
- Provides the main flavour and body of the sauce once beaten and sieved.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
- Velouté
- Thickens the sauce and gives it a silky, savoury base.
The step that matters
Rub the lobster through a sieve. Pushing the beaten meat through a sieve removes fibres and lumps, so the sauce ends up smooth rather than grainy.
“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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