This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Lobster Newberg has chunks of tender lobster meat in a rich and decadent cognac-cream sauce, served with toast points. It’s outstanding!
Hi everyone – Jack here. Lobster Newberg is a rich and decadent seafood dish. It’s a wonderful menu option if you are looking to serve a special meal for two for the holidays, a birthday, Valentine’s Day, or an anniversary.
This is actually a fairly simple dish to prepare. But both lobster and cream sauce are what I would call ‘delicate’ ingredients, so it can be easy to overcook Lobster Newberg – resulting in tough and chewy shellfish.
But don’t worry – if you follow the recipe below precisely, the end results will be stunning. The secret to making a perfect Lobster Newberg is to read through the recipe beforehand to familiarize yourself with the process, have all of the ingredients ready to go, and just take your time.
The History of Lobster Newberg
Although there are a couple of restaurants that claim to have created this amazing meal back in the 1800’s, most stories attribute this dish to Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City. A wealthy sea captain named Ben Wenberg shared his recipe idea with Charles Delmonico, the restaurant manager at the time.
Intrigued by the idea, Charles Delmonico gathered all of the ingredients on the spot so that Wenberg could demonstrate how to prepare the recipe.
With its tender chunks of lobster in an amazing sauce – everyone agreed that the dish was delicious! After a few tweaks by the restaurant chef, Lobster a la Wenberg was added to the menu at Delmonico’s and quickly become a customer favorite.
A few months later, Charles Delmonico and Ben Wenberg had a falling out – and Lobster a la Wenberg was removed from the menu. But customers kept asking to order the dish, so it was renamed Lobster Newberg and added back to the menu to this day.
Lobster Newberg is often listed as Lobster Newburg – but either way you spell it, it’s absolutely delicious!
You may enjoy these other Lobster recipes:
- New England Lobster Roll
- Lobster Mac and Cheese
- Lobster Corn Chowder
- Lobster Sambuca Over Fettuccini
We love seeing what you made! Tag us on Instagram at @afamilyfeast or hashtag #afamilyfeast so we can see your creations!
Lobster Newberg
Ingredients
Prepared Toast Points, see recipe here
2 live lobsters, 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds each or about 3/4 to 1 pound of cooked lobster meat
1 stick butter or 6 tablespoons clarified butter
3 tablespoons cognac or sherry*
1 cup heavy cream, plus more as needed *See Notes below
3 egg yolks, beaten
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg **See Notes below
Pinch of cayenne pepper **See Notes below
Instructions
Prepare Toast Points (see recipe here) and set aside.
Fill large pot with water and bring to a boil. Add two live lobsters, head first into the boiling water.
Once it comes to a boil, time exactly eight minutes. Normally cooking time would be longer but the cooked lobster meat will be cooked further in this dish.
Discard water and plunge the cooked lobsters into an ice bath to cool them down quickly.
Let them sit in the ice bath for ten minutes then remove claw meat, tail meat and knuckle meat. Save shells in the freezer for future lobster stock but discard inner body.
Cut meat into bite sized pieces, leaving claws whole for appearance.
In a medium saute pan, melt the stick of butter over medium heat and leave on heat until the butter fat separates. Skim off and discard the butter fat and pour the now clarified butter into a cup stopping just before you get to the residue on the bottom. Discard that and return the now clarified butter to the pan. Or use 6 tablespoons of clarified butter if you normally keep it in your refrigerator.
Heat the clarified butter over medium heat and add the cooked lobster meat (if the lobster meat is wet it WILL splatter so make sure you pat the meat dry with a paper towel.)
Saute the meat for about two minutes until a little golden and tender. Do not cook any longer or it will get tough.
With a slotted spoon, remove the lobster meat to a bowl.
Off heat, add the cognac and return the pan to heat and cook for another minute.
Add the heavy cream and reduce the heat to a medium low simmer. (Heavy cream is one of the few dairy products that will not break under heat.) Simmer slowly until the mixture has reduced to about a cup.
Place the beaten egg yolks in a medium bowl and slowly drizzle in the hot cream mixture while you whisk. This tempers the eggs so they thicken the mixture without scrambling.
After the entire pan is drizzled into the bowl of egg yolks, scrape back into the pan with a rubber spatula and add the salt, nutmeg and cayenne. Stir and taste and ONLY add more nutmeg and cayenne if it needs more.
Add lobster meat back in along with any liquid in the bowl and stir over low heat just to heat the lobster through. Do not let it bubble after the egg yolks are in.
If the mixture is too intense in flavor, add a little more heavy cream to smooth it out.
Serve with Toast Points.
Last Step! Please leave a review and rating letting us know how you liked this recipe! This helps our business thrive & continue providing free recipes.
Notes
**Start with just a pinch of nutmeg and cayenne pepper. You can always add more, but you can’t take it back.
*Buy enough heavy cream to smooth out the mixture if the flavor is too intense or if you added too much nutmeg or cayenne. I bought a pint instead of a cup and ended up using a little more at the end.
The original recipe used sherry and some other recipes use cognac. I like cognac in this dish vs. sherry but if you want to stay true, use sherry.
Kathleen ⁸ says
Th
is did. Not give me proper directions. My parents made this dish from the middle 50’s and for many years later. They also made Thermador in those same years. I was so young I did not learn there recipes.
Help me with.more accurate directions.
Thank you
Martha says
Kathleen – We have no other instructions to share other than what is included in the recipe card. If you feel our recipe is inaccurate, you may want to search online for a different recipe if ours isn’t to your liking.
Edith Reidy says
I doubled the recipe an used equal amounts of cognac and dry sherry, Abe the result was marvelous, a dish my large family loved!
Martha says
Thanks Edith!
Victory says
can you prepare sauce ahead of time? if so how far in advance
Martha says
Hi Victory – We don’t recommend it – this is a dish best prepared right before serving.
Ellen says
I live in Maine and was horrified to see this recipe instructions say that the lobster bodies should be discarded. WRONG!!! Evidently this self appointed expert has never cooked with a Mainer. There’s a lot of meat in the bodies. Open them up, scrape out the roe (orange) and tomalley (green and edible although an acquired taste). Then dig into the pockets of meat where the legs and knuckles are attached. and explore to find other pockets in the body. Mainers shudder at the waste when we see people who don’t know throw away the bodies.
Also, the instructions for cooking lobsters are not the Maine way. Only a few inches of water are needed plus a tablespoon to 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt per QUART of water. Bring the water to a boil. Put lobsters in, cover, bring back to a boil and cook 15 to 20 minutes depending on the number of lobsters. And, I have NEVER experienced or heard of wet lobster meat that needed to be dried off! Perhaps the person who published this recipe should visit Maine to find out what they’re talking about.
Jack says
Hi
Few things here. First, I am writing my response from our house in Maine, enough said there. Secondly, I agree lobster bodies should be used and picked clean and personally, I do for ourselves. But with a recipe web site, simple is sometimes better. We have found that if we over-complicate recipes, people just keep scrolling. So we have learned over the past eight years that we need to make some compromises in our recipes to make it approachable for a less experienced cook. Lastly, there are multiple ways to prepare a dish and all of them can be correct. We often get comments from people who grew up making a dish one way and actually get angry when we suggest a possible alternate method or suggest adding or substituting ingredients. But that doesn’t make them bad, just different.
I’m sure your Newberg is great, but so is ours.
All the best,
Jack
Hillarey says
I referenced this dish for our anniversary dinner last night. The cooking time for the lobsters were on point. I added chopped garlic, and shallots along with a mix of fresh herbs, tarragon, parsley and basil to the sauce, as well as a shake of nutmeg after adding the cream. It was delicious served over homemade fettuccini noodles.
It is quite the process cooking and shelling the lobsters, but so worth it.
Martha says
Happy Anniversay Hillarey – glad you found the information helpful!
Jim says
I will never make this again from F.F. I followed this to the TEE and at the end (add lobster) it broke and looked like off color cottage cheese.
I have cooked for 40 years and never had this happen before. Something is missing in the instructions.
Jack says
Hi Jim, sorry this happened. I also have been cooking for 40 years and have seen many a Newberg ruined when the egg yolks were not tempered properly. Also, once the yolks have been tempered in, the mixture could also break at this point if the heat is raised too high. Handling the egg yolks properly can make or break this dish (no pun intended).
Jack
Christiana says
Thank you for the advice, Martha!
Christiana says
This looks great, and you explain it in a way that makes me less intimidated to try to make it! Two questions: 1) how important is it that the butter be clarified? I have not tried doing this before. 2) My husband hates seafood, so I’d only be making this for me. How do the leftovers keep, or should I halve the recipe? Thanks!
Martha says
Hi Christiana – Clarifying the butter removes the milk solids, so when used to saute a food (such as this lobster), it’s less likely to scorch and burn. It’s your choice in the end, but for a dish like this, I’d suggest taking the extra step to clarify the butter. We have a post about it here: https://www.afamilyfeast.com/sunday-cooking-lesson-clarified-butter/
You can reheat the leftovers, but freshly made is always best for seafood and for sauces like this. I’d probably cut the recipe in half (it’s also a very rich dish!).
Hope that helps, and we hope you enjoy the recipe!
Susan Cliffe says
I have not tried this recipe yet but would like to know if you can use the green stomach stuff.
Martha says
Hi Susan – We don’t recommend adding the tamale to the Lobster Newberg. In addition to changing the color, it will also change the taste and texture of the sauce.
Bernard M Hilton says
I tried this recipe with a couple modifications. I just used the melted butter as is… Not “clarified”. I also added two cooked lobsters, shucked. Pan seared sea scallops and jumbo shrimp as well as Alaskan king crab legs and used dry sherry (more traditional). Added some paprika and parsley flakes for color. I plated it around a simple baked haddock with Ritz cracker crumb topping. It was very good! I was a cook in a previous life and always judge my dishes very critically. ( If I ordered this in a restaurant, would I be pleased? ). The answer was yes!
Martha says
Thank you so much Bernard – your changes to the recipe sound like great additions and we are so glad we passed inspection! 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to write to us today.