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Lobster Ragoot

A lobster ragout made with white sauce, fish stock, egg yolks, butter, mace, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Ragoot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster shell, keeping it as whole as possible, and cut into 1-inch square pieces.

  2. Pound the lobster spawn in a mortar with the butter, adding a pinch of mace and salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the ragout

  1. In a stewpan, combine the white sauce and fish stock, bring to a boil, and season to taste.

  2. Add the egg yolks, lobster spawn mixture, butter, and lobster pieces.

  3. Cook gently for a few minutes to remove the raw taste of the eggs, then serve.

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 + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lobster + fishtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 main meaty texture and sweet flavour of the dish.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they gently set with heat.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that carries the lobster pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the spawn mixture and sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks gently. Egg yolks thicken by setting with heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils, they can scramble and turn grainy. Cooking gently thickens the sauce smoothly and also cooks out the raw egg taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, sauce, fish, egg, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, sauce, fish, egg, butter, pepper. 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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