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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster parts, eggs, mustard, tarragon vinegar, olive oil, and served over lettuce or lobster.

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

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the moist part and eggs of the lobster and pass through a fine sieve.

  2. Add mustard, egg yolks, and pepper; mix well.

  3. Stir in tarragon vinegar and olive oil to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce in a boat or over chopped cos lettuce with lobster flesh on top.

  2. Toss the salad gently for five minutes 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.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body.
Olive oil
Adds fat that makes the sauce creamy and rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Eggs of the lobster
Add richness and body to the sauce when pounded and sieved.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added gradually to the egg yolk mixture so it emulsifies; adding it too quickly can make the sauce separate and turn greasy. The record gives no method for this, so take care when stirring it in.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, egg, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, olive):

  1. Lettucethe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, egg, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, olive. 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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