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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from boiled lobster, butter, water or vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and optional lobster meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coral butter

  1. Put the coral and spawn of the boiled lobster into a mortar with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Pound it to a smooth mass, then rub it through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt ½ cup of sweet butter with ¼ cup of water or vinegar.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of made mustard, the coral and spawn, and a little salt and pepper.

  3. Stir until smooth and serve.

  4. Optionally, chop some of the lobster meat finely and stir it in.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster coral and spawn
Gives the sauce its rich colour and concentrated shellfish flavour.
Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Water or vinegar
Adds liquid to the butter, and vinegar adds sharpness that balances the richness.
Made mustard
Its emulsifiers help the butter and liquid hold together as a smooth sauce, and it adds a sharp bite.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and liquid until smooth. Melted butter and water or vinegar naturally separate. Stirring well while adding the mustard and coral mixture helps the emulsifiers in the mustard bind them into a smooth sauce rather than a greasy, broken one.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, vinegar, pepper, meat. 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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