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Lobster Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, fish stock, lobster meat, anchovy essence, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour to make a roux and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the fish stock, stirring constantly until thickened.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and chop it finely.

  2. Add the lobster meat and anchovy essence to the sauce.

  3. Stir in the cream and heat through 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.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as the roux cooks with the butter and stock.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid that the roux thickens into a smooth sauce.
Lobster
Supplies the main seafood flavour and tender chopped meat to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and heat through without boiling. Boiling a cream sauce can cause it to separate and turn grainy, and it can also toughen the delicate lobster meat. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the lobster tender.

“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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