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Sauce

Good Lobster Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, then rub it through a fine sieve and set aside.

  3. Cut the lobster flesh into ½-inch dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt enough butter to make the desired quantity of sauce, seasoning it with essence of anchovies, cayenne, mace, and salt.

  2. Add a few tablespoons of cream to the melted butter.

  3. Gradually mix in the pounded coral until liquefied, then stir this mixture into the sauce.

  4. Add the lobster flesh to the sauce and heat 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
Provides the sweet, tender meat that forms the body of the sauce.
Coral (in the method)
Adds colour and a rich, delicate lobster flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the seasonings and gives the sauce a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling can cause the cream and butter emulsion to separate and the lobster flesh to toughen, so the sauce should only be warmed through.

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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