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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made from lobster meat, shell stock, flour, butter, anchovy, cayenne, salt, lemon juice, and optional 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

Make the base

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Break the shell and stew it with the legs in ½ cup of water until reduced.

  3. Strain the mixture and add flour and water to thicken.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pound some of the live spawn from the tail with a little water, then add it to the sauce.

  2. Let it boil, then stir in 2 tablespoons of fresh butter.

  3. Add the lobster meat and season with anchovy, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. For a richer sauce, use a cold boiled lobster, pound the coral with sweet oil, and mix with the lobster meat.

  5. Gradually stir the mixture into melted butter without boiling.

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
Provides the main seafood flavour and the meat that gives the sauce substance.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the mixture into melted butter without boiling.. Adding the mixture slowly lets the butter blend into a smooth emulsion. Boiling can split the butter into greasy separated fat and leave the sauce grainy.

“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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