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Lobster or Crab Soup

A soup made from crab or lobster meat, shell broth, onion, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lobster or Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells and meat

  1. Boil the crabs or lobsters until cooked.

  2. Pick out the meat and chop it finely.

  3. Pound the shells and small claws in a mortar.

  4. Boil them in the reserved water for 2 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the chopped onion in butter until lightly browned.

  2. Add the crab or lobster meat to the pan and warm for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Sift flour and pepper over the meat and stir well.

  4. Add the strained shell broth.

  5. If the broth is less than 3 pints, add more of the water from boiling the lobsters.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 1 hour.

  7. Add the boiling milk and let it boil once.

  8. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Crabs or lobsters
Provide the meat for the soup and the shells that make the flavourful broth.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and gently browns the onion.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the broth and milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the broth's flavour.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth when lightly browned in butter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the meat. Flour sprinkled over fat and meat must be stirred well so it coats evenly; otherwise lumps form and it will not thicken the broth smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, milk. 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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