Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup, or Bisque

A lobster bisque made with veal broth, lobster meat, and thickened with butter and flour, served with fried bread dice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,232 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Soup, or Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the veal in enough water to cover it until the meat is reduced to shreds.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Boil the lobster.

  4. Extract all the meat from the body and claws.

Make the lobster meatballs

  1. Bruise part of the coral in a mortar and mix it with an equal quantity of lobster meat.

  2. Add mace, cayenne, salt, and pepper.

  3. Form into meatballs using the beaten egg yolk as a binder.

Make the bisque and serve

  1. In a pot, combine 3 quarts of veal broth with the lobster meat cut into mouthfuls and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Thicken the soup with the remaining coral rubbed through a sieve.

  3. Add the meatballs and a little butter mixed with flour.

  4. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling to preserve the color.

  5. Serve with small dice of bread fried brown in butter.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Veal
Boiled down to shreds, it gives the broth its body and rich meaty flavor.
Lobster
Supplies the main sweet, briny flavor and tender pieces of meat in the soup.
Lobster coral
Rubbed through a sieve, it colors and thickens the soup with a rich orange hue.
Egg yolk
Binds the lobster and coral mixture so it holds together as meatballs.
Butter and flour
Mixed together, they form a roux that thickens the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Once the soup is thickened, a hard boil can break the delicate lobster color and make the meatballs and lobster meat tough, so the heat should stay low.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lobster, pepper, egg, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lobster, pepper, egg, butter, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes