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Lobster Newburg

A creamy lobster dish with butter, flour, egg yolks, cream, salt, pepper, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Gradually add the cream to the mashed egg yolks and strain into the chafing dish.

  3. Add the salt and white pepper, then light the lamp and stir until hot but not boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently add the lobster and stir until heated through.

  2. Stir in the sherry or Madeira 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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the seafood flavor and texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms the base that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken and enrich the cream sauce.
Cream
Gives the sauce its body, richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity and sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over gentle heat until hot but not boiling. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can curdle or turn grainy if boiled, so the sauce must stay below a simmer.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, flour, egg, cream, sherry):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, flour, egg, cream, 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.

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