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Bisque of Lobster

A creamy soup made with lobster meat, butter, flour, stock, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bisque of Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop the lobster meat very fine.

  2. Melt the butter in a pot and add the flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the soup stock or consomme, stirring to avoid lumps.

Finish and serve

  1. Bring to a boil, then add the lobster meat, fresh butter, cream, salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Boil again and serve, adding a few pieces of lobster to each plate.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries flavour and richness, and forms the fat base of the roux.
Flour
Cooked with butter into a roux, it thickens the liquid into a smooth body.
Soup stock or consomme
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens and the other ingredients flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished bisque.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavour and the characteristic taste of the bisque.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the roux. Flour starch swells as it hydrates, so adding the liquid gradually while stirring disperses the granules and prevents lumps. Adding it all at once lets the starch clump before it can be smoothed out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, meat, butter, flour, cream, 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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