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Lobster Soup

A lobster soup made with lobster meat, French roll crumbs, anchovies, onion, herbs, lemon peel, butter, nutmeg, flour, cream, milk, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and crush the fins, chine, and small claws in a mortar, discarding the brown fin and the bag in the head.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the crushed lobster parts, French roll crumbs, anchovies, onion, herbs, lemon peel, and water; simmer gently until all flavors are extracted, then strain.

Make the soup

  1. In a mortar, pound the lobster spawn with butter, nutmeg, and flour, then mix in the cream and milk.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, adding the lobster tails cut into pieces.

Make forcemeat and serve

  1. Make forcemeat balls from the remaining lobster meat, seasoned with mace, pepper, and salt, adding a little flour and bread crumbs; moisten with the egg.

  2. Heat the forcemeat balls in the soup and serve.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat and the shells and parts that build the flavorful stock.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly so the soup has body rather than running thin.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the flavor and giving a velvety texture.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat balls so they hold together when cooked.
French roll crumbs
Lightly thicken the stock and add body to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the stock gently. Boiling vigorously can make the stock cloudy and extract bitter flavors from the shells, so a gentle simmer gives a clearer, cleaner-tasting broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, lemon, butter, nutmeg, flour, cream, milk):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, lemon, butter, nutmeg, flour, cream, milk. 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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