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Lobster Dressing

A buttery lobster sauce made with flour, egg yolks, sherry, salt, pepper, and canned lobster.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the lobster from the can and drain all the liquid.

  2. Bone the lobster and let it sit for 2–3 hours before dressing.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then add flour and cream to make a dressing.

  2. Season the dressing with salt and pepper, then add the lobster and sherry.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the beaten egg yolks.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 flesh and seafood flavor of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a stable base for the dressing.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the dressing as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so if the dressing is too hot the yolks can curdle or scramble. Adding them just before serving, off the heat, keeps the dressing smooth and creamy.

“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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