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Prawn Soup

A soup made with lobster, prawns, onion, butter, water, stock, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the lobster meat and shells with onion, butter, and water for 1 hour.

  2. Add 3 quarts of stock.

  3. Mix flour with cold stock and stir into the soup until thickened.

  4. Boil for another 30 minutes.

  5. Strain through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove shells and add prawns.

  2. Boil for 6 minutes.

  3. Stir in cream and serve immediately.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the onion and lobster into the broth.
Sweet thick cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.
Prawns
Supply the main seafood flavour and tender texture in the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in cream and serve immediately. Cream can split or curdle if it boils for long or reheats repeatedly, so it should be added off the heat or at the very end and served right away to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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