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Sauce

Lobster Butter

A butter sauce made with lobster meat, white wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Select a hen lobster and remove the meat and spawn.

  2. Bruise the meat and spawn in a mortar.

Make the butter

  1. Add white wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Incorporate 4 ounces of butter dusted with flour.

  3. Work the mixture well and rub it through a fine sieve.

  4. Keep in a cool place until ready to 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.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hen lobster
Provides the meat and spawn that give the butter its flavour and colour.
Butter
Carries the lobster flavour and gives the mixture a rich, smooth body.

The step that matters

Work the mixture well and rub it through a fine sieve. Thorough working breaks the bruised meat and spawn into fine particles so the butter blends evenly. Pushing it through a fine sieve removes fibres and lumps, giving a smooth texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, flour. 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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