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Good Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster tail, butter, anchovy essence, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream 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 ↓

Good Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Split the lobster tail carefully and remove the coral.

  2. Pound half of the coral smoothly with the butter in a mortar.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and set aside.

  4. Dice the firm lobster flesh into pieces no smaller than ½ inch.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt enough butter to create the desired amount of sauce.

  2. Season the melted butter with essence of anchovies, cayenne, mace, and salt.

  3. Add a few spoonfuls of rich cream to the butter mixture.

  4. Gradually mix in the pounded coral until liquefied.

  5. Combine the coral mixture with the sauce and stir well.

  6. Add the diced lobster flesh and heat the sauce gently by the fire without boiling.

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. Lobster + creamtop 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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lobster coral
Gives the sauce its rich, colourful flavour and a smooth body when pounded and sieved.
Butter
Forms the base of the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a silky, rich texture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the sauce into a smoother, creamier texture.
Firm lobster flesh
Provides pieces of firm, sweet lobster meat that hold their shape in the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce gently without boiling. Boiling can cause the butter emulsion to separate and turn the cream greasy or grainy, and it can toughen the delicate lobster flesh.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, butter, pepper, cream. 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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