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Lobster Soup

Soup made with lobster, anchovy, onions, stock, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobsters

  1. Boil the lobsters until cooked, then break off the claws and fins.

  2. Pound the claws, fins, anchovy, and onions in a mortar.

Make the stock

  1. Add the mixture to 4 pints of stock and simmer until the flavor is extracted.

  2. Strain the stock and cut the lobster meat into small pieces.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the coral with the lobster meat.

  2. Bruise the spawn with a little flour.

  3. Wet the spawn with strained stock.

  4. Mix the spawn into the soup.

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 + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Anchovy + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Hen lobsters
Provide the main meat and coral, which give the soup its body and flavor.
Anchovy
Adds a savory, salty depth that enriches the stock.
Onions
Pounded into the stock, they add aromatic sweetness and flavor.
Beef, mutton, or veal stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries all the flavors.

The step that matters

Mix the spawn into the soup. Flour-bruised spawn must be wet with stock first so it disperses smoothly without lumps. Adding it dry or to a boiling soup can cause clumping, so it should be stirred in gently and kept hot rather than boiled.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, anchovy, onion, beef, pepper, sherry):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, anchovy, onion, beef, pepper, sherry. 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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