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Lobster and Prawn Soup

A creamy soup of lobster, prawns, and lobster stock thickened with white roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 and Prawn Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock from lobster shells and prawn heads; flavor with herbs and vegetables, then strain.

Thicken and season

  1. Add white roux to the stock until it thickens to a cream-like consistency.

  2. Stir in shelled prawns, shredded lobster meat, claw pieces, salt, cayenne, and cochineal.

  3. Cover and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Add lemon juice, anchovy essence, hot cream, and lobster coral; do not boil again.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

  4. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White roux
Thickens the stock into a cream-like consistency as its starch swells with heat.
Prawns
Provide sweet, tender seafood pieces that cook quickly in the hot soup.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate seafood flavor and substance to the soup.
Hot cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich seafood broth.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the cream and coral. Boiling dairy after adding cream can cause it to curdle or separate, and boiling delicate seafood toughens it. Keeping the soup just hot preserves a smooth texture and tender shellfish.

“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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