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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, butter, flour, anchovy paste, cayenne, salt, lemon juice, and wine or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Lobster Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick the meat from the lobster.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  3. Break the shell.

  4. Stew the shell and legs in ½ cup of water until reduced.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Add flour and water to thicken.

  2. Pound some of the live spawn from the tail with a little water. Gradually add it to the sauce.

  3. Let it boil briefly.

  4. Add 4 tablespoons of butter.

  5. Season with anchovy, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

Add the lobster meat and finish

  1. Split the tail of a cold boiled lobster.

  2. Pound the coral with sweet oil. Rub it through a sieve with the coral.

  3. Chop the body meat into small pieces.

  4. Cut the claw and tail flesh into dice.

  5. Stir into melted butter without boiling.

  6. Season with mace and cayenne.

  7. Add white wine or cream.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Lobster
Supplies the sweet meat and coral that give the sauce its flavour and colour.
Flour
Thickens the stewed lobster liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
White wine or cream
Adds acidity or richness to round out the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Stir into melted butter without boiling.. Boiling after the lobster meat and coral are added can cause the egg-rich coral and butter to separate or turn grainy, so the sauce should be kept hot but not boiling.

“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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