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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, stock, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Remove all the meat and soft parts from the lobster body and chop finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chopped lobster with 1½ pints of white stock.

  3. In a bowl, mix ¼ pound of butter with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  4. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  3. Serve in an oyster dish as a sauce for 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 (in the method)
Provides the main flavour and the meat that gives the sauce its character.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the lobster flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and stock, giving it body.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the saucepan. Flour mixed with butter, added to hot liquid, can clump if not whisked in smoothly. Stirring steadily while the sauce heats lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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