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Sauce

Good Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster flesh, 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. Remove the coral from the lobster and pound half of it in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Pass the pounded coral through a fine sieve and set aside.

  3. Cut the firm flesh of the lobster into pieces no larger than ½ inch.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, season the sauce with essence of anchovies, cayenne, mace, and salt.

  2. Add a few tablespoons of rich cream and mix in the pounded coral gradually.

  3. Once well combined, add the lobster flesh to the sauce.

  4. Heat gently by the side of the fire without boiling to preserve the color.

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 colour and a rich lobster flavour when pounded and sieved smooth.
Lobster flesh
Provides the chunks of meat that give the sauce body and substance.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and richness, smoothing the sauce and softening its texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling can curdle or break cream-based sauces and dull the coral's colour. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and its colour bright.

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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