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Lobster Soup

A soup made from hen fish, lobster, vegetables, herbs, and a crust, thickened with flour and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the hen fish into neat little pieces.

  2. Beat the fins and minor claws in a mortar.

  3. Stew the beaten parts in a saucepan with white stock and the herbs, onion, celery, carrot, and toasted crust.

Simmer and strain

  1. Season with salt and cayenne, and simmer for about an hour.

  2. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster pieces and mix in the beaten coral with flour and gravy.

  2. Heat the soup for a few minutes without boiling, then serve hot.

  3. Optionally, boil a strip of lemon rind and add nutmeg for extra flavor.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hen fish (lobster)
Provides the main flavour and the tender meat pieces of the soup.
Coral
Beaten into the soup to add colour and richness to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has a fuller body.
Gravy
Adds body and savoury depth to the thickened soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the flavours are simmered into.

The step that matters

Heat without boiling. Once the flour and gravy are mixed in, boiling can make the thickened soup separate or turn grainy and can toughen the lobster meat. Heating gently keeps it smooth and tender.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, celery, carrot, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, celery, carrot, flour, nutmeg. 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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