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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster, butter, flour, milk, water, salt, cayenne, and lobster meat.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster as directed in a recipe for boiled lobster and remove it from the shell.

  2. Rub the lobster through a sieve using a potato masher and mix it with an equal quantity of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat ½ cup of butter and ½ cup of flour over medium heat in a thick saucepan until bubbling.

  2. Gradually stir in 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of water.

  3. Season the sauce with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add the lobster butter to color the sauce and stir in 1 cup of lobster meat.

Serve

  1. Once the sauce boils, serve it with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Forms the roux with flour and enriches the sauce with fat and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the sauce as the liquid base.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender pieces throughout the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the milk and water. Adding the liquid slowly into the hot butter and flour roux lets the starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps and producing a smooth, properly thickened sauce.

“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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