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Lobster Soup

A rich soup made with lobster, shrimp, chicken feet, veal or fish stock, and seasoned with spices, herbs, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and break up the shell.

  2. Combine the lobster shell, small claws, and heads of the shrimps with enough water to cover them.

  3. Stew for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain and set the liquid aside.

  5. Lightly brown the onions, carrot, turnip, mace, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, parsley, marjoram, and celery in a stewpan.

  6. Add the chicken feet and veal or fish stock.

  7. Stew for 1.5 hours.

Prepare the pounded mixture

  1. Cut the lobster meat into dice-sized pieces and set aside.

  2. Pound the cream and meat from the lobster head and coral with the picked shrimps.

  3. Season with cayenne and nutmeg.

  4. Moisten with garlic vinegar.

  5. Mix the reserved lobster liquid with the pounded mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add essence of anchovy to the tureen.

  2. Skim and strain the soup.

  3. Mix in the reserved lobster pieces and pounded ingredients.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Pour the soup into the tureen and add the hard-boiled egg yolks and fish forcemeat balls if using.

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

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Hen lobster
Provides the main shellfish flavour and the tender meat added at the end.
Shrimps
Their shells and heads build the stock, and picked meat is pounded into the soup for body.
Chicken feet
Release gelatine during long stewing, giving the soup a fuller, silkier body.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a smooth, mealy texture to the finished soup.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Pounding the lobster head, coral and shrimp meat with the stock. The pounded mixture thickens and flavours the soup, so it must be fully broken down and mixed in evenly. Lumps stay grainy, and the coral's fat and flavour only spread through the liquid when it is finely worked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, shrimp, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, shrimp, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley. 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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