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Lobster a LA Xewbturgh

A lobster dish prepared with butter, flour, cream, egg yolk, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lobster a LA Xewbturgh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil lobsters in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, remove the meat and cut it into small squares.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix butter, flour, pepper, salt, and cream.

  2. Add the egg yolk to the mixture before adding the wine.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the Madeira wine.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce taste smooth and round.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid and giving it body.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and enriches the sauce, adding body and a silky texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness, acidity and aroma that give the sauce its character.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk before the wine. The yolk must be fully mixed into the warm butter and flour base before the liquid goes in, so it emulsifies smoothly instead of curdling or leaving lumps in the sauce.

“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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