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Lobster Soup

A soup made with boiled hen fish, lobster, vegetables, and stock, seasoned with salt, Cayenne pepper, and optional lemon rind and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the boiled hen fish into neat little pieces.

  2. Beat the fins and minor claws in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the beaten parts in a saucepan with white stock and the sweet herbs, onion, celery, and carrot.

  2. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer for about an hour.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Return the liquid to the saucepan.

  6. Add the lobster pieces.

  7. Mix in the coral beaten with flour and gravy.

  8. Heat the soup for a few minutes without boiling.

  9. Boil a strip of lemon rind in the stock (optional).

  10. Add nutmeg for extra flavor (optional).

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Hen fish (lobster)
Provides the main meat and flavor of the soup.
Coral
Beaten with flour and gravy, it thickens the soup and adds rich color and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the coral mixture so it blends smoothly into the liquid.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and depth to the stock during stewing.
French roll crust
Toasted crust that adds toasty flavor and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Heat the soup without boiling. Once the coral and flour mixture is added, boiling can cause the thickened soup to separate or turn grainy, and it can toughen the delicate lobster meat. Gentle heating keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, celery, carrot, pepper, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, celery, carrot, pepper, flour, nutmeg. 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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