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Lobster Soup

A broth of lobster parts, water, French roll crumb, anchovies, onion, herbs, lemon peel, cream, butter, nutmeg, flour, served with lobster tails and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the claws, bodies, and tails of the lobsters, discarding the brown fur and head bag.

  2. Beat the fins, chine, and small claws in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the lobster parts gently in 2 quarts of water with the French roll crumb, white pepper, salt, anchovies, onion, sweet herbs, and lemon peel until flavorful.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Beat the spawn with a bit of butter, nutmeg, and flour.

  4. Mix the beaten spawn with the cream.

  5. Cut the lobster tails into pieces and boil them with the cream and strained soup.

Add forcemeat and serve

  1. Make forcemeat balls from the remaining lobster, mace, pepper, salt, crumbs, and eggs.

  2. Heat the forcemeat balls in the soup.

  3. Serve the soup with the heated forcemeat balls.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the tender meat for the soup and forcemeat balls.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Lobster spawn
Thickens the soup slightly and adds a rich, deep lobster flavor when beaten into the cream.
French roll crumb
Helps bind and thicken the broth while adding body to the soup.
Onion
Builds a savory, aromatic base for the lobster broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the lobster parts gently. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins in lobster and cloud the broth, so a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the soup clear and flavorful.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, onion, parsley, lemon, cream, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, onion, parsley, lemon, cream, butter. 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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