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Lobster Soup, or Bisque

A creamy soup made from veal broth, lobster meat, coral, and thickened with egg yolk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 and lobster

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

  2. Boil the lobster, extract the meat from the body and claws, and bruise part of the coral in a mortar.

Make the force-meat balls

  1. Mix the bruised coral with an equal quantity of lobster meat, adding mace, cayenne, salt, and pepper.

  2. Form the mixture into force-meat balls, binding with the beaten egg yolk.

Make the soup and serve

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

  2. Thicken the soup with the remaining coral rubbed through a sieve, then add the force-meat balls and a little butter rolled in flour.

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

  4. 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

Egg yolk
Binds the force-meat balls so they hold their shape when cooked.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a smoother, richer body.
Lobster coral
Colors and flavors the bisque, and thickens it when rubbed through a sieve.
Veal
Provides the meat broth that forms the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Once the soup is thickened, a hard boil can break the emulsion of butter and coral, dulling the color and making the texture grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth and bright.

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.

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