Name: Lobster Sauce
Ingredients: 1 lobster; 1 pint velouté sauce; 1 ounce lobster spawn or coral; butter sauce or supreme

Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

1 lobster
1 pint velouté sauce
1 ounce lobster spawn or coral
butter sauce or supreme

Directions

Boil the velouté sauce with the lobster spawn or coral until it turns bright red.
Add the best part of the lobster meat, cut into small pieces.

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.

Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 flavour and the tender meat that sits in the finished sauce.
Velouté sauce: Forms the smooth, thick base that carries the lobster flavour.
Lobster spawn or coral: Colours the sauce bright red and adds a rich lobster aroma.

The step that matters

Boiling the velouté with the spawn or coral. The coral must be heated enough to turn bright red and release its colour and flavour into the sauce. Boiling too long or too hard can break or thicken a delicate sauce unevenly, so watch it closely until the colour develops.

“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.