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Lobster Bisque

A creamy soup made with lobster, butter, flour, mace, pepper, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobster for about 15 minutes, then remove and chop it finely.

Make the bisque

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Add the mace, pepper, and beaten egg to the butter-flour mixture.

  3. Gradually stir in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the chopped lobster to the mixture 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the meaty body of the bisque.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the bisque.
Flour
Thickens the liquid, giving the bisque a smooth, body-rich texture.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the bisque slightly when combined with the warm milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that makes up most of the soup.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the milk and bring to a boil. Adding milk slowly to the butter-flour mixture keeps it smooth, without lumps. Bringing it to a boil thickens the starch from the flour, which sets the soup's body. Heating too fast or unevenly can scorch the milk or curdle the beaten egg.

Swap the mace

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

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

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