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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, shell stock, butter, flour, anchovy sauce, cayenne, salt, lemon juice, sweet oil, mace, and wine or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Break the shell and stew it with the legs in ½ pint of water until reduced.

  3. Strain the mixture and add flour and water to thicken.

  4. Pound some of the live spawn from the tail with a little water, then add it to the sauce.

  5. Let it boil, then add ½ pound of butter.

  6. Stir in the lobster meat and season with anchovy, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

Finish the variation

  1. For a variation, pound the coral from a cold boiled lobster with sweet oil, then mix with the chopped lobster meat.

  2. Stir the mixture into melted butter without boiling, and season with mace and cayenne.

  3. Add white wine or cream to 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.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Supplies the meat and shell that give the sauce its main flavour and body.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
White wine or cream
Adds acidity or creaminess that lightens and rounds the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the coral mixture into melted butter without boiling. High heat can curdle or separate the butter emulsion and cause the delicate coral and egg flavour to turn grainy or bitter, so the sauce should stay below a boil at this point.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, pepper, lemon. 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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