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Boiled Haddock Served with Lobster Sauce

Boiled haddock served with a sauce made from lobster, butter, flour, lemon juice, cayenne, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and lobster work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 31 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Haddock Served with Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the haddock

  1. Wash the haddock and place it in a fish kettle with boiling water to cover.

  2. Add the salt and boil gently for about 30 minutes.

Make the lobster sauce

  1. Pick out the flesh of the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. In a mortar, pound the lobster meat with 4 ounces of butter.

  3. In a small saucepan, melt 3 ounces of butter and stir in the flour until well mixed.

  4. Add the pounded lobster meat, lemon juice, and cayenne, then gradually stir in the boiling water.

  5. Cook the sauce over the fire for 10 minutes, then strain it.

  6. Return the sauce to the saucepan, add the lobster pieces, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Carefully drain the fish, place it on a hot dish, and baste with a small quantity of the sauce.

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. Haddock + lobstertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming flaky when gently poached.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water into a sauce that coats the fish.
Lobster
Supplies the main flavour of the sauce and tender pieces of meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and lobster sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the flour. Pouring the boiling water in gradually while stirring lets the flour starch hydrate evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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