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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster, melted butter, beef gravy, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the gills from the lobster and bruise the body.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the lobster to the melted butter and pull the flesh into small bits.

  2. Mix the lobster flesh with the beef gravy and bring to a boil.

  3. Before serving, add salt and squeeze in lemon juice.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  4. Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,278 recipes

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

  5. Lobster + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the meat that gives the sauce its body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel that carries the lobster flavor.
Beef gravy
Forms the savory base of the sauce and thickens it with its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and gravy.

The step that matters

Bringing the lobster and gravy to a boil. Boiling the lobster flesh in the gravy cooks the shellfish fully and sets the sauce. Overheating can toughen the lobster and make the sauce grainy, so keep the heat controlled once it reaches a boil.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, butter, beef):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, beef. 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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