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 Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the lobster spawn or coral and pound it with twice as much butter.
Add one anchovy and a little cayenne pepper.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a small basin.
Keep it in a cool place until needed.
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.
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Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together470 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,697 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,609 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster spawn or coral
- Provides the rich, distinctive flavour and orange colour of the butter.
- Butter
- Carries the flavour and gives the finished butter a smooth, spreadable texture.
- Anchovy
- Adds savoury depth that enhances the seafood flavour without tasting fishy.
The step that matters
Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous bits of shell and coral. Pressing through a fine sieve removes them, giving the butter a smooth texture and an even colour.
“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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