Name: Lobster Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint melted butter; 1 tin of lobster; a few drops of cochineal or carmine

Why it works: Butter and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint melted butter
1 tin of lobster
a few drops of cochineal or carmine

Directions

Drain the lobster and set it aside.
Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Divide the lobster into small, neat pieces and warm them through in the melted butter.
Add a few drops of cochineal or carmine to color the sauce.

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.

Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Melted butter forms the rich base of the sauce, carrying flavour and giving a smooth, glossy texture.
Lobster: Provides the main flavour and the tender pieces that make up the body of the sauce.
Cochineal or carmine: Adds red colour to the sauce; it does not change flavour noticeably.

“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.