Name: Lobster Sauce
Ingredients: 1 lb lobster; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup butter; a few grains cayenne pepper; 1 cup flour; ½ tablespoon lemon juice; 3 cups cold water

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

Remove the meat from the lobster and cut the tender claw meat into ½ inch dice.
Chop the remaining meat, add it to the body bones, and cover with water.
Cook until the stock is reduced to 2 cups, then strain.

Make the sauce

In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together.
Gradually add the lobster stock to the butter and flour mixture.
Stir in the salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and lobster dice.
If the lobster contains coral, prepare Lobster Butter, add flour, and thicken the sauce with it.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, savory flavor and the tender meat that gives the sauce body.
Butter: Carries flavor and adds richness, with flour forming the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour: Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the lobster stock into a smooth sauce.
Cold water: Extracts flavor from the lobster shells and bones to make the stock.