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Lobster Sauce

A sauce made by boiling water with mace, cloves, and cayenne pepper, then adding butter, lobster pieces, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 spiced butter base

  1. Boil water with mace, cloves, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Melt butter into the strained liquid.

Cook the lobster and finish

  1. Cut the lobster into small pieces.

  2. Stew the lobster pieces until very tender.

  3. Squeeze in the juice of one lemon.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded body.
Lobster
Provides the main flavor and meaty texture of the sauce.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and lobster.
Mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused liquid.
Cloves
Contribute a strong, warm aroma to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Stewing the lobster until very tender. Lobster protein tightens and turns rubbery when heated too long or too hard. Stewing gently until just tender keeps the meat soft and juicy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, butter, lobster, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, butter, lobster, lemon. 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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