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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made with lobster, butter, flour, water, cream, anchovy essence, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the water and bring to a boil.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Stir in the anchovy essence and cream, mixing well.

  6. Remove the pan from the heat.

Finish with lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into neat squares and stir it into the sauce.

  2. Warm the sauce by the fire, but do not boil.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Lobster
Provides the main lobster flavour and tender pieces of seafood.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Anchovy essence
Adds savoury depth and a salty, umami note.

The step that matters

Warm the sauce by the fire, but do not boil.. Boiling can cause cream sauces to separate and make delicate lobster meat tough and rubbery. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the lobster tender.

“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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