Name: Lobster-Sauce, or Crab-Sauce, for Turbot
Ingredients: 1 hen lobster (fresh and alive if possible); 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; meat from the lobster tail (cut into small dice); optional: anchovies, caviar, ketchup, spices, walnut or lemon pickles

Why it works: Butter and caviar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster-Sauce, or Crab-Sauce, for Turbot

Ingredients

1 hen lobster (fresh and alive if possible)
2 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
meat from the lobster tail (cut into small dice)
optional: anchovies, caviar, ketchup, spices, walnut or lemon pickles

Directions

Prepare

Boil the lobster until cooked.
Pound the spawn and coral with butter until smooth.
Rub the mixture through a sieve into melted butter.

Finish the sauce

Season the sauce with cayenne pepper.
Add the diced lobster meat to the sauce and heat gently without boiling.
Enhance flavor with optional ingredients if desired.

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.

Butter + caviartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together107 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together909 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Melts into the sauce to give it richness and a smooth, silky body.
Lobster spawn and coral: Provides the concentrated lobster flavour and the orange colour of the sauce.
Lobster tail meat: Adds tender pieces of lobster texture to the finished sauce.
Cayenne pepper: Adds a mild background heat that sharpens the rich flavours.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently without boiling. Butter-based emulsions can split or turn greasy when overheated. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and keeps the diced lobster meat tender rather than rubbery.

“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.

Lobster Sauce174 recipes

Lobster Croquettes99 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Meatballs37 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Lobster-Sauce, or Crab-Sauce, for Turbot