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Sauce

Cardinal Sauce

A bright red sauce made with lobster spawn, butter, flour, stock, and cream.

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

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Mix the flour with a little water or stock to form a smooth paste.

  2. Boil the remaining water or stock and pour it onto the flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the coral and finish

  1. Pound the coral or spawn with the butter, then rub it through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the coral mixture to the sauce gradually until it turns bright red.

  3. Boil well, then season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Stir in the cream before serving.

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.

  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 + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, pourable sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the coral flavour when pounded with it.
Coral or lobster spawn
Gives the sauce its colour and characteristic shellfish flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's finish.

The step that matters

Add the coral mixture gradually. Adding the coral in small amounts lets you control the colour and flavour. Adding it all at once can make the sauce uneven, and the coral should not be boiled hard after it goes in, as high heat can dull its colour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, lobster, 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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