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Lobster Newburg

Creamy lobster dish with butter, egg yolks, onion juice, paprika, and sherry, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster 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. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add salt, paprika, and onion juice to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the diced lobster and cook slowly for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the cream and beaten egg yolks, stirring slowly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the wine and serve on toast.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main flavor and tender bite that the sauce surrounds.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a smooth sauce as they gently set with heat.
Thin cream
Forms the body of the sauce and carries moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and gives the lobster a rich base to cook in.
Sherry or port wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the cream and yolks.

The step that matters

Add the cream and yolks slowly. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot or are added too quickly. Stirring slowly over gentle heat lets them thicken the cream smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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