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Lobster Soup

A soup made from boiled lobster, fish stock, toasted French roll crust, onion, lemon peel, salt, cayenne, and served with lobster quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters.

  2. Remove the meat from the body, claws, and tail, and chop it into small pieces.

  3. Bruise the shells, small claws, and fins in a mortar.

Make the stock

  1. Add them to the fish stock.

  2. Add the toasted crust of the French roll, chopped onion, lemon peel, salt, and cayenne to the stock.

  3. Simmer for nearly an hour.

  4. Strain the soup to remove shell bits.

Make and fry the quenelles

  1. Make quenelles by mixing the pounded coral, part of the lobster meat, butter, bread crumbs, and beaten egg.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls.

  3. Fry the quenelles in hot butter until evenly browned.

  4. Keep them warm in a tureen.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained soup to the kettle.

  2. Add the remaining lobster meat.

  3. Boil for 1 minute.

  4. Pour the soup over the quenelles in the tureen.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main flavour and the meat that is chopped into the soup and quenelles.
Egg
Binds the quenelle mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the quenelles a light, firm body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the quenelles brown in the frying pan.
French roll crust
Toasted crust thickens the stock slightly and adds a toasted, nutty depth.

The step that matters

Fry the quenelles in hot butter until evenly browned. If the butter is not hot enough, the quenelles soak up fat and turn greasy; if it is too hot, the outside burns before the egg-bound centre sets. Gentle, even heat gives a golden crust and a cooked interior.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, lemon, pepper, butter, bread, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, lemon, pepper, butter, bread, egg. 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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