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Sauce

Cardinal Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, water or fish stock, cream, and coral or lobster spawn, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cardinal Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Mix the flour with a little water or stock to form a smooth paste.

  2. Boil the remaining water or stock and pour it onto the flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan and boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the coral and finish

  1. Pound the coral or spawn with the butter, then rub it through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the coral mixture to the sauce gradually until it turns bright red.

  3. Boil well, then season with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice to taste.

  4. Stir in the cream before serving.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lobstertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the coral into a smooth, buttery mixture.
Coral or lobster spawn
Gives the sauce its bright red colour and its shellfish flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder texture at the end.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot stock onto the flour paste. Stirring constantly while adding the boiling liquid spreads the flour evenly so starch grains swell smoothly instead of clumping into lumps.

“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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