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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from boiled lobster, butter, flour, mace, peppercorns, and sweet oil, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavored water

  1. Boil the mace and peppercorns in water until the flavor is extracted.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the flavored water.

  2. Add flour as it heats.

  3. Pound the coral of the lobster in a mortar with a little sweet oil.

  4. Stir the lobster mixture into the melted butter.

  5. Chop the lobster meat into small pieces.

  6. Rub the chopped lobster through a colander into the butter.

  7. Cut the claw and tail meat into dice.

  8. Stir the diced meat into the sauce.

  9. Bring the sauce to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with fresh salmon or any boiled fish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  3. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Flour + lobstertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mace + lobstertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together596 recipes

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

Butter
Melts into the flavored water to form the body and richness of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Lobster
Provides the main flavor and texture, with coral enriching the sauce and meat added as pieces.

The step that matters

Rub the chopped lobster through a colander into the butter. Pressing the lobster through a colander breaks it into fine particles that disperse evenly and thicken the sauce smoothly. Large unbroken pieces would leave the sauce grainy and uneven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lobster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lobster. 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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