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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, and white sauce, seasoned with lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove all the meat from the lobster and cut it into dice-sized pieces.

  2. Pound the lobster meat, spawn, and coral with the butter in a mortar, then rub through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Combine the mixture with the White Sauce, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Let it stew for 10 minutes, then 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

Butter and sauce 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 body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the lobster flavour through the pounded mixture.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that the lobster mixture is folded into.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich lobster and cream flavours.

The step that matters

Rubbing the pounded mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding the lobster meat, spawn, and coral with butter makes a paste that can stay grainy. Pushing it through a fine sieve removes fibres and lumps, giving the sauce a smooth texture when it is combined with the White Sauce.

“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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