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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster, flour, butter, milk or cream, anchovy essence, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Remove the gills and inside from the lobster and chop it small.

  2. Pull the remaining lobster into pieces with two forks.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together.

  2. Gradually add the milk or cream, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the essence of anchovy, mace, and cayenne to the sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the sauce with the lobster pieces and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meat and flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base roux with flour.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving body and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk or cream, stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Adding it all at once can clump the roux and leave a grainy sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, flour, butter, milk, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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