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Lobster Chowder

A creamy soup made with lobster meat, milk, butter, onion, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the milk with the onion slice, then remove the onion.

  2. Add the butter, lobster liver, diced lobster meat, salt, and pepper to the milk.

  3. Stir in the hot water from the stewed lobster bones and the rolled crackers.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper or paprika if desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lobster + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main meaty texture and sweet flavour of the chowder.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the chowder its body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavour of the milk and lobster.
Rolled crackers
Starch from the crackers thickens the milk and gives the chowder body.

The step that matters

Scaling the milk. Heating milk until it just forms steam, without boiling, helps prevent scorching and a skin forming on the surface, which keeps the chowder smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, meat, milk, butter, liver, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, milk, butter, liver, pepper. 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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