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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, shell stock, flour, water, butter, and seasonings such as anchovy, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy 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 ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick the meat from the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Break the shell and stew it with the legs in 1½ pints of water until reduced.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture and add flour and water to thicken.

  2. Pound some of the live spawn from the tail with a little water and add it to the sauce.

  3. Let it boil, then add ¾ pound of butter.

  4. Stir in the lobster meat and season with anchovy, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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 flavour and the tender meat that is stirred into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the sauce becomes body-rich and clings to food.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth that enhances the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water to thicken. Flour must be fully dispersed in water before or as it is added, otherwise it clumps and leaves a lumpy sauce; the mixture must then be kept at a gentle simmer so the starch thickens fully.

“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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