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Lobster, Delmonico Style

A lobster dish in a creamy, seasoned sauce with egg yolks and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, Delmonico Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and cream. Stir until thickened.

Finish the lobster

  1. Add the lobster meat, cut into ½ inch dice, and heat thoroughly.

  2. Remove from heat. Stir in the egg yolks and sherry.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provides the main protein and body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Thin cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a silky texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and sherry off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

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