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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, gravy, lemon juice, and optional anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Meat and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 909 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the coral from the lobster.

  2. Mix the coral with 2 tablespoons of gravy.

  3. Strain the mixture into ½ cup of melted butter.

  4. Add the meat of the lobster and bring to a boil.

  5. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon.

  6. If desired, add 2 pounded anchovies.

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. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  5. Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster coral
Pounded and strained into the butter, it gives the sauce its colour and rich lobster flavour.
Melted butter
Forms the base of the sauce, carrying flavour and giving a smooth, rich texture.
Gravy
Combined with the coral before straining, adding savoury body to the sauce.
Lobster meat
Added to the warm butter and brought to a boil, contributing sweet seafood flavour and substance.
Lemon juice
Squeezed in at the end, adding acidity that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil after adding the lobster meat. Boiling a butter-based sauce can cause it to separate and turn greasy, and overcooked lobster becomes tough and rubbery. Keep the heat controlled once the meat is in.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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