Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Bisque

A creamy lobster bisque made with lobster, milk, crackers, butter, lemon, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the lobster into small pieces.

Make the bisque

  1. In a pot, combine the lobster, boiling water, salt, and cayenne pepper. Cook for 80 minutes.

  2. Heat the milk until boiling, then stir in the rolled crackers.

  3. After 30 minutes of cooking the lobster, stir in the butter and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the milk mixture to the pot and stir well.

  5. Just before serving, add the lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavour and tender meaty texture in the bisque.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the soup as the base liquid.
Rolled crackers
Thicken the milk mixture, giving the bisque body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy flavours.

The step that matters

Adding the milk mixture. Hot milk can curdle or scorch if it boils hard or is added carelessly, so stir it in gently and keep the soup at a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes