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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster, butter, anchovies, stock, flour, lemon, lemon pickle, and corach.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster and spawn butter

  1. Cut the lobster into dice-sized pieces.

  2. In a mortar, combine the lobster spawn, butter, and anchovies. Pound the mixture.

  3. Sieve the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the diced lobster and stock.

  2. Add butter rolled in flour. Heat over medium, stirring until it boils.

  3. If not thick enough, add a little flour mixed with water and boil again.

  4. Stir in the lobster spawn and simmer without boiling.

  5. Add lemon pickle and squeeze in the juice of half a lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Lobster + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Lobster
Provides the main meat and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and rolled in flour it thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock as the sauce comes to a boil.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth when pounded with the spawn and butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the spawn without boiling. Egg-rich or delicate mixtures can curdle or turn grainy if boiled hard, so the spawn mixture should only simmer gently in the sauce to keep it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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