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Lobster Soup

A hearty soup made with lobster, stock, wine, rice, and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped ham, minced onion, minced carrot, parsley, and thyme in butter until softened.

  2. Add the mixture to the white stock and white wine in a large pot.

Simmer and finish

  1. Stir in the chopped boiled lobster and simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the soup, then add the sliced hard-boiled egg, butter, and boiled rice.

  3. Heat the soup until very hot and serve with slices of toast.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled lobster
Provides the main flavour and the meaty pieces of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the vegetables are softened.
Boiled rice
Thickens the soup slightly and adds body.

The step that matters

Simmer the lobster for 1 hour. Lobster is already cooked, so a long simmer can make it tough and rubbery. Keeping the simmer gentle and the time as written helps the soup stay tender and flavourful.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, parsley, thyme, butter, white wine, lobster):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, parsley, thyme, butter, white wine, lobster. 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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