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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, ketchup, mace, horseradish, lemon, gravy, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Horseradish and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the spawn from the lobster.

  2. Bruise the spawn in a mortar with a little batter.

  3. Take all the meat from the claws and tail, and cut it into small square pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the spawn, lobster meat, ketchup, mace, horseradish, lemon juice, and gravy.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Mix the melted butter with flour to thicken the sauce.

  4. Gently boil the mixture for 6-7 minutes.

  5. Remove the horseradish, mace, and lemon pieces.

  6. Squeeze the lemon juice into the sauce.

  7. Simmer briefly.

  8. Serve.

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. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lobster + ketchuptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Lobster
Provides the main meaty texture and the sweet, rich flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body rather than a thin liquid.
Gravy
Supplies savoury body and depth to the liquid base of the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavours of the lobster and butter.

The step that matters

Mixing the melted butter with flour. Flour must be fully blended into the butter and liquid so it hydrates evenly; stirring it in unevenly leaves lumps and an uneven, floury thickness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, ketchup, horseradish, lemon, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, ketchup, horseradish, lemon, butter, flour. 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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