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A Lobster Soup

A soup made with cod, lobster, vegetables, herbs, anchovies, and thickened with butter, flour, egg yolks, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Wash and cut the codlings into pieces.

  2. Place the fish in a stewpan with onion, celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, sweet herbs, and anchovies.

  3. Add water and stew slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the lobster meat.

Finish the soup

  1. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Form balls with fish, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, butter, egg yolks, and an anchovy.

  3. Add the balls to the soup along with the crust of the French roll.

  4. Season to taste and simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve hot in a tureen.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Codlings
Provide the fish body that flavours the stock and the fish balls.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate shellfish flavour and tender pieces to the finished soup.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the soup as the flour starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body and richness.
Egg yolks
Bind the fish balls and enrich them, helping them hold together when simmered.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the fish balls into a soft, cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish balls in the soup. The balls are held together by egg yolk and crumbs. Boiling hard can toughen the yolk and break the balls apart, so keep the soup at a gentle simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, meat, lobster, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, meat, lobster, 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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