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Lobster Mayonnaise

A creamy lobster sauce made with butter, flour, cream, milk, egg yolks, lemon juice, anchovy essence, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add enough flour to thicken slightly.

  2. Stir in the cream and milk, then add the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Heat the sauce until hot but do not let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in lemon juice, anchovy essence, pepper, and salt.

  5. Stir over boiling water until thickened to a cream-like consistency.

  6. Once cooled, mix in the minced lobster meat.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of crisp lettuce in a round dish.

  2. Garnish with shelled prawns and small lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Forms the base of the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and sets the sauce's body when combined with liquid.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the sauce must be heated gently and kept off a boil to stay smooth and thickened.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, cream, milk, egg, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, milk, egg, butter, flour, pepper. 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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