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Lobster Soup

A soup made with fish broth, white stock, roux, lobster meat, claws, shell, sherry wine, and served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine equal parts fish broth and white stock in a pot.

  2. Thicken with roux and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface and season with salt, red pepper, and Harvey sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, place diced lobster meat, claws, and upper shell mixture.

  2. Add the strained soup and a glass of sherry wine.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + lobstertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Roux
Thickens the broth so it has body and a silky texture.
Lobster meat
Provides the main flavor and tender bite of the soup.
Upper shell of lobsters
Adds concentrated lobster flavor and color when pounded and strained into the soup.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Straining the shell mixture into the soup. Pounded shell must be pressed through a fine sieve so no grit or fragments remain. Fine solids would make the texture gritty, while the strained liquid carries the lobster flavor smoothly into the broth.

“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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