Skip to main content
Main

Lobster and Oyster Ragout

A seafood ragout of lobster, oysters, and a brown roux sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster and Oyster Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a frying pan until it hisses.

  2. Add the lobster pieces, each squeezed with 3 drops of onion juice, and sauté until smoking hot.

Poach the oysters

  1. Drain the oyster liquor and heat it in a saucepan while the lobster cooks.

  2. When the liquor boils, strain it and return it to the fire with the oysters.

  3. Cook the oysters for 2 minutes after boiling, then strain them out.

  4. Arrange the fried lobster in a deep dish and top with the oysters.

  5. Keep warm over boiling water while reheating the oyster liquor.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Season the liquor with salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and parsley, then thicken with the brown roux and boil once.

  2. Remove from heat and slowly stir in the beaten yolks, then add the sherry without returning to the fire.

  3. Pour the sauce over the oysters and lobster, and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty bulk and sweet flavour of the ragout.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the dish.
Beaten egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy consistency.
Brown roux
Thickens the oyster liquor into a body-rich sauce with a toasted flavour.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce returns to the fire after adding them, they can scramble and turn grainy. Stirring slowly off the heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, meat, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, sherry):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, meat, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, sherry. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes