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 Sahce
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the lobster shells in 1 pint of water for 1 hour.
Strain the liquid and return it to the pot.
Add 1 pint of cream, 4 ounces of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, 2 tablespoons of anchovy, cayenne, and salt to the pot.
Cut the lobster meat into dice and add it to the sauce.
Stir well and heat until warmed through.
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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Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,050 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together335 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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 meat
- Provides the main seafood flavour and tender pieces of meat in the finished sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the cream and liquid so the sauce becomes body rather than watery.
- Cream
- Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
- Anchovy
- Adds deep savory, umami depth that enhances the seafood flavour.
The step that matters
Heat until warmed through. Flour-thickened cream sauces can scorch or separate if boiled hard, and lobster meat turns rubbery when overcooked. Gentle heating keeps the sauce smooth and the lobster tender.
“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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