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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from boiled lobster, butter, flour, mace, peppercorns, and lobster parts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Boil mace and peppercorns in water until spices are extracted.

  2. Strain the mixture and melt butter in the liquid, adding flour while stirring.

  3. Pound the coral from the lobster with a little sweet oil and stir into the melted butter.

  4. Chop the lobster body meat finely and rub it through a colander into the butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the claw and tail flesh into dice and stir it in.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve with fresh salmon or any boiled fish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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
Melts into the liquid to give the sauce its rich body and mouthfeel.
Flour
Added while stirring to thicken the melted butter and liquid into a smooth sauce.
Lobster coral
Pounded and stirred in to add colour and a rich, concentrated lobster flavour.
Lobster body meat
Rubbed through a colander into the butter to enrich the sauce with lobster flavour and texture.
Lobster claw and tail flesh
Diced and stirred in to give the sauce substantial pieces of lobster meat.

The step that matters

Adding the flour while stirring. Flour added to hot melted butter must be stirred constantly so it disperses evenly; otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lobster, meat. 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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