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Lobster Bisque

A creamy soup made with lobster, fish stock, butter, flour, egg yolks, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Chop the lobster tail meat.

  2. Cook the lobster meat in fish stock for about 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the cooked lobster meat through a sieve.

  4. Cook the lobster shells separately in a small amount of water and add to the soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with butter and flour, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and gradually stir them into the soup over low heat.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the lobster flavour.
Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavour as part of the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body when cooked with the butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the soup when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble if the soup boils. Stirring beaten yolks in gradually over low heat tempers them, so the bisque becomes smooth and silky rather than curdled.

“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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