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Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster, milk, cracker crumbs, butter, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the lobster into small pieces.

  2. Pound the hard crackers into crumbs.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the lobster tomalley (or green part) with the cracker crumbs, butter, and red pepper until well combined.

  2. Boil the milk and gradually pour it over the mixture, stirring continuously.

  3. Add the chopped lobster to the pot and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  4. If available, grate the coral of the lobster and add it to 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Lobster + milktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together489 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the meat that forms the body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and creaminess to the soup.
Hard crackers
Crumbled crackers thicken the soup and give it body as they absorb the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the milk and pour it in gradually while stirring. Adding hot milk to the cracker mixture all at once can cause lumps and uneven thickening. Gradual addition with constant stirring lets the starch in the crumbs hydrate evenly, giving a smooth, consistent soup.

“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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