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Lobster Bisque

A creamy soup made from canned lobster, water, cream, butter, and soda crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut up the lobster from the can.

  2. Stew the lobster in 3 pints of water for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 pint of cream and ½ cup of butter.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Stir in 3 crushed soda crackers and serve immediately.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the meat of the bisque.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.
Soda crackers
Starch from the crushed crackers absorbs liquid and thickens the bisque slightly.

The step that matters

Stir in the crushed crackers and serve immediately. Crushed crackers are starch that keeps absorbing liquid and thickening the soup the longer it sits. Serving right after stirring them in keeps the texture smooth and prevents the bisque from becoming heavy or pasty.

“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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