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Lobster Newburo

A lobster dish with a creamy sauce of butter, flour, milk, cream, egg yolks, pepper, salt, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Newburo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk and cream, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks, red pepper, salt, and black pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster pieces and stir to coat.

  2. Return to heat, add sherry, and serve hot.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Lobster
Provides the main protein and sweet flavour that the sauce coats.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth sauce with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body when thickened.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, silkier texture in the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble when they meet very hot liquid. Taking the sauce off the heat before mixing them in lets them thicken it gently and keeps it smooth.

“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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