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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster, butter, flour, water, cream, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne.

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

Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster tail and claws, and cut it into dice.

  2. Wash and dry the coral, then pound it with 2 ounces of butter and rub it through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 1 ounce of butter and add the flour, mixing over heat.

  2. Gradually add ½ pint of water, stirring well, and boil the sauce for a few minutes.

  3. Add the coral mixture, lobster pieces, seasoning, and cream, then mix and warm thoroughly.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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 flavour and the tender meat that is warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flavour of the coral into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smoother, rounder texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the water to the roux. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smooth, so the sauce thickens without lumps. Boiling it afterwards cooks out the raw flour taste and fully thickens the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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