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Sauce

Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, milk, parsley, onion, lemon peel, anchovy sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape lobster butter into a small jar for later use.

  2. Reserve 2 teaspoons of cut-up lobster meat for the sauce.

  3. Pound the remaining lobster meat with chopped onion, parsley, and lemon peel until well combined.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter with milk until thin.

  2. Add lobster butter to the melted butter until it turns bright red.

  3. Stir in reserved lobster meat, anchovy sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce warm in a ladle.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 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 meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and the tender bite of the sauce.
Butter
Carries fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Milk
Thins the melted butter and adds gentle creaminess to the sauce.
Lobster butter
Adds concentrated lobster flavor and the bright red color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the lobster butter. Fat-soluble color and flavor from the lobster butter dissolve best into warm, melted butter. Adding it gently and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly colored rather than separated or streaky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, milk, parsley, lemon, anchovy. 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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