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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with flour, water, butter, lobster meat, fine lobster coral, cayenne, and anchovy or shrimp essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine flour and boiling water to make a plain butter sauce.

  2. Add fresh butter and stir until melted.

  3. Incorporate the lobster meat and pounded coral.

Season and serve

  1. Season with cayenne and anchovy or shrimp essence.

  2. Heat gently without boiling, then serve with salmon or turbot.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the boiling water and butter into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts into the sauce.
Lobster meat
Provides the main lobster flavour and tender pieces of seafood in the sauce.
Lobster coral
Adds a deeper lobster flavour and a rich colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling can toughen delicate lobster meat and cause a butter-based sauce to separate, so gentle heat keeps it smooth and tender.

“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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