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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster spawn, anchovies, gravy, butter, boiled lobster meat, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Lobster and meat 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 lobster spawn and anchovies together.

  2. Pour 2 tablespoons of gravy over the mixture and strain it into ½ cup of melted butter.

  3. Add the chopped meat of the boiled lobster and bring to a boil.

  4. Finish with a squeeze of lemon.

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 + meattop 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. Lobster + buttertop 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 spawn
Gives the sauce its rich, concentrated lobster flavour and colour.
Anchovies
Adds savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour without tasting fishy.
Melted butter
Provides the fat base that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savoury body to loosen the pounded mixture for straining.
Boiled lobster meat
Supplies the main lobster flavour and tender texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil after adding the lobster meat. Boiling the butter-based sauce with the lobster meat can cause it to separate or turn greasy, and overcooking toughens the delicate lobster. Heat should be just enough to warm the meat through and keep the sauce emulsified.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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