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A sauce made with anchovy sauce, salt, cayenne, mace, sifted spawn, and lobster, heated until nearly boiling, served with turbot or salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and lobster work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the anchovy sauce, salt, cayenne, mace, and sifted spawn in a bowl.

  2. Add the lobster and heat the mixture until it is nearly boiling, but do not let it boil to preserve the color.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with turbot or salmon.

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. Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + lobstertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together596 recipes
  5. Pepper + lobstertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,247 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Sifted spawn
Provides the rich, creamy body and savoury flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Anchovy sauce
Adds a salty, savoury depth that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Lobster
Supplies the main seafood flavour and sweetness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Heating the mixture until it is nearly boiling, but not letting it boil, helps preserve the pale colour of the sauce. Boiling can cause the sauce to darken and change its texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, pepper, lobster):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, pepper, lobster. 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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