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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, broth, spices, cream, anchovy, lemon, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Allspice and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 654 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shell and claws, breaking it into small pieces.

  2. If using a hen lobster, pound the coral and spawn in a mortar.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the broken shells in ½ cup of water or veal broth with allspice, mace, whole pepper, and horseradish until the flavors are extracted.

  2. Strain the liquid and combine it with the lobster pieces in a stewpan.

  3. Add cream or melted butter, anchovy sauce, and lemon juice.

  4. Stir and simmer for about 5 minutes without boiling to preserve color.

  5. Season with cayenne and salt, then serve in boats.

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. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 flavour and the body of the sauce.
Cream or butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Anchovy sauce
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and lobster flavours.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Once cream or butter is added, a hard boil can cause it to separate and the sauce to turn grainy or dull in colour. Gentle simmering keeps the emulsion smooth and the colour bright.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, veal, allspice, pepper, horseradish, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, veal, allspice, pepper, horseradish, cream. 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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