Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Newberg

A lobster dish with butter, cream, sherry, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Newberg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cook the lobster in boiling water until done.

  2. Remove the lobster meat and chop it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt butter and add the lobster meat.

  2. Stir in cream and sherry, then heat gently.

  3. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl.

  4. Slowly add a bit of the hot mixture to temper the yolks.

  5. Combine the yolk mixture with the lobster mixture, stirring until thickened.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flesh and sweet, delicate seafood flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the lobster warms in the pan.
Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the richness of the cream.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently heated, giving it a silky, cohesive body.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding a little hot mixture first gradually raises the yolks' temperature, so they thicken the sauce smoothly instead of curdling.

“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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes