Name: Quick Lobster Soup
Ingredients: 3 lbs fish (less choice parts of halibut or cod); 3 quarts cold water; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 cup milk; 2 tablespoons cornstarch; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 eggs; 1 can preserved lobster (freed from bones and cut up small)

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Quick Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Cover the fish with cold water and boil until the water reduces to less than 2 quarts and the fish is in rags.
Strain the broth through a fine sieve and return it to a boil.
Season with salt and pepper, then skim the surface.

Thicken and finish

Mix the cornstarch into the milk, then stir the mixture into the soup and continue boiling.
Add the butter and stir until melted.
Remove one cup of soup, beat it into the eggs.
Return the egg mixture to the soup and stir in the lobster.
Cover and let stand in a pot of hot water for 10 minutes before serving.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Fish + lobstertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together326 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch: Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
Eggs: Enrich and thicken the soup when gently heated, adding richness and body.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk: Adds creaminess and softens the flavor of the broth.
Fish: Provides the flavorful base broth through long simmering.

The step that matters

Tempering the eggs. Adding the hot soup to the eggs gradually, rather than the eggs directly, warms them without scrambling. Returning the mixture to the soup should be gentle so the egg proteins thicken it smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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Quick Lobster Soup