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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, flour, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lobster meat into small dice.

  2. Pound the coral (the lobster's roe) with 1 tablespoon of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the remaining butter and flour to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the boiling water, pounded coral, and butter-flour paste to the mixture.

  3. Season with cayenne and lemon juice, then simmer for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the lobster, bring to a boil, and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and seafood flavors.
Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender pieces in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter-flour paste into the liquid. Flour lumps form if it meets hot liquid unevenly, so the paste should be smooth first. The starch must then simmer to fully thicken the sauce and lose its raw taste.

“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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