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Lobster Soup

A creamy lobster soup made with boiled lobsters, milk, butter biscuits, eggs, and spices, served over small biscuits and garnished with nasturtium flowers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a large handful of coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the lobsters headfirst and boil for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

  3. Remove the lobsters, wipe off any scum, and drain them.

  4. Break off the claws, crack them, and extract the white meat and red coral, cutting them into small pieces.

  5. Mash the coral with sweet oil and mix in the chopped lobster.

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, heat 2 quarts of milk and thicken it with the pounded biscuits or roll crumbs.

  2. Stir in ¼ pound of fresh butter mixed with 2 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Add the chopped lobster and season with nutmeg, powdered mace, and cayenne.

  4. Let the mixture boil gently for 30 minutes, covered.

  5. Towards the end, stir in 2 beaten eggs.

Serve

  1. Place small biscuits in the bottom of a tureen and pour the soup over them.

  2. Garnish with nasturtium flowers before serving.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 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 red coral, which colours and enriches the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the soup's body and creaminess depend on.
Butter biscuits
Thicken the milk as their starch swells during heating.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Works with the butter to thicken the soup and give it body.
Eggs
Set when stirred into the hot soup, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten eggs. Eggs can curdle or turn grainy if they hit very hot liquid too fast. Stir a little hot soup into the eggs first, then add them back slowly while stirring, and keep the soup from boiling hard.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, egg, biscuit. 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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