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Lobster with Sauce

A lobster served with a sauce made from melted meat glaze, Madeira, bread crumbs, butter, cayenne pepper, parsley, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Split the lobster lengthwise into two halves and remove the gills.

  2. Trim the flesh and arrange the lobster halves in a circle on a hot dish, placing the claws in the center.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, mix the melted meat glaze and Madeira, then boil and remove from heat.

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, butter, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

  3. Add the mixture to the liquid while stirring to create a thick sauce without boiling.

  4. Incorporate the creamy substance from the lobster body, passed through a sieve, and add vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the lobster and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the sweet, delicate meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps emulsify and smooth the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Lightly thicken the sauce as they absorb liquid and bind with the butter.
Meat glaze
Adds concentrated savory depth and body to the sauce.
Madeira
Contributes sweetness and aromatic depth to the reduced liquid base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and glaze flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the mixture without boiling. Once the butter and bread crumbs are stirred in, boiling can break the emulsion, causing the butter to separate and the sauce to turn greasy and thin. Keeping the heat off and stirring gently keeps the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

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