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Lobster Bisque

A creamy soup made with lobster, onion, carrot, thyme, bay leaf, white wine, bouillon, rice, consommé, butter, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lobster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Fry the diced onion and carrot in butter with thyme and bay leaf.

  2. Add the lobster pieces and sauté for a few moments.

  3. Pour in the white wine and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Add the bouillon and cook for half an hour.

Make the bisque

  1. Reserve some lobster pieces for garnish and crush the shells in a mortar.

  2. Mix the crushed shells with the cooked rice and add to the consommé.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth.

  4. Cream the mixture and add a piece of butter and heated lobster tails just before serving.

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. White wine + sherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and sweet seafood character of the bisque.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth as it cooks down into the base.
Cooked rice
Thickens the mixture and gives the bisque a smoother body when strained.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished bisque.
Onion and carrot
Build a sweet, aromatic base through slow frying in butter.

The step that matters

Add the lobster tails just before serving. Lobster tail meat is delicate and turns tough and rubbery if overheated, so it should be warmed gently only at the end.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, lobster, white wine, rice, butter, sherry):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, lobster, white wine, rice, butter, sherry. 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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