Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup

A soup made from boiled lobster meat, stock, flour, butter, lemon, anchovy essence, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Extract the meat from the shells of the lobsters and set the spawn aside.

  2. Beat the fins and small claws in a mortar, then place them in a saucepan with water to draw out the flavor.

  3. Strain the liquid and return it to the saucepan.

Make and finish the soup

  1. In a mortar, beat the spawn with flour and butter, then rub it through a sieve into the strained soup.

  2. Simmer the soup for 10 minutes without boiling, then squeeze in lemon juice and add essence of anchovies.

  3. Serve with forcemeat balls made from minced lobster, spawn, French roll crumb, egg, and mace, rolled in flour.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Hen lobsters
Provide the sweet meat and the shells and fins that build the soup's flavor.
Spawn (in the method)
Its rich fat and flavor are rubbed into the soup to thicken and enrich it.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the butter and spawn.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the soup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. A gentle simmer keeps the soup from boiling hard, which can toughen the delicate lobster meat and break the thickened butter and flour mixture, leaving the soup grainy or greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, flour, butter, lemon, pepper. 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.

You might also like

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