Skip to main content
Sauce

Lobster Catsup

A preserved lobster sauce made with sherry wine, cayenne pepper, and black pepper, bottled and stored for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Lobster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and pound the red coral in a mortar until bruised.

  2. Add the lobster meat and moisten with a little sherry wine.

  3. Mix in the cayenne pepper and the remaining sherry wine thoroughly.

Bottle and store

  1. Transfer the mixture into two wide-mouthed bottles.

  2. Top each bottle with a tablespoon of whole black pepper.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly and secure with leather.

  4. Store for up to one year.

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. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + sherrytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together215 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lobster + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,247 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sherry + winetop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main savory body and flavor of the catsup.
Sherry wine
Moistens the mixture and adds a mellow, aromatic flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and sharpness that carries through the preserved mixture.

The step that matters

Mix in the cayenne pepper and the remaining sherry wine thoroughly. Cayenne is potent and unevenly distributed clumps will taste harsh in some bites. Thorough mixing spreads the heat and the sherry evenly through the lobster so every spoonful is seasoned consistently.

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes