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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, gravy, butter, lemon juice, and optional anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

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

Directions

  1. Pound the coral from the lobster.

  2. Pour 2 tablespoons of gravy over the coral.

  3. Strain the mixture into 2 tablespoons of melted butter.

  4. Add the meat of the lobster and bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in the juice of 1 lemon.

  6. If desired, add 2 pounded anchovies.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  5. Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster coral
Gives the sauce its colour and a rich, concentrated lobster flavour.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the sauce.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury body to carry the coral flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and seafood flavours.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding the lobster meat. Boiling cooks the lobster meat through and thickens the sauce. Lemon juice is added after this, since acid stirred in at high heat can dull its fresh flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, lobster):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, lobster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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