Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Sauce

A creamy sauce made from lobster stock, butter, flour, and diced lobster, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the lobster shell with peppercorns, herbs, and onion in water for 40-50 minutes.

  2. Strain and reduce the liquid to 3/4 pint.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter and mix with flour to create a roux.

  2. Add the boiling cream to the roux and stir until thickened.

  3. Mix in the reduced lobster stock, cayenne pepper, anchovy essence, and diced lobster flesh.

  4. Add lobster butter or coral and lemon juice; do not boil again.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce base.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Boiling cream
Adds fat and body, and helps the sauce thicken into a creamy texture.
Lobster shell
Gives the stock its concentrated lobster flavour during simmering.
Lobster butter or coral
Adds deep lobster flavour and a rich colour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Add lobster butter or coral and lemon juice; do not boil again.. Heat can cause the emulsified butter and cream to separate and turn grainy, and it dulls the delicate lobster flavour and acidity. Adding these last and keeping the sauce below boiling preserves its smooth texture and fresh taste.

“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.

More lobster sauce recipes

Newburg 3 See all 230 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes