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Lobster Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the lobster into small pieces and add it to the boiling water with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

  3. In a separate pot, heat the milk and stir in the crushed cracker crumbs.

  4. After 30 minutes, stir the butter into the lobster and simmer for a few minutes.

  5. Add the milk mixture to the lobster and beat everything together.

  6. Before serving, stir in the juice of half a lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the meaty body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the soup its body.
Crushed crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the soup, adding body to the milk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the milk mixture to the lobster. Crackers thicken as they absorb liquid, so stirring them in while the milk is hot and beating the mixture well helps them disperse evenly and prevents lumps and an uneven texture.

“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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