Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster meat, French roll crumb, anchovies, herbs, lemon peel, butter, nutmeg, flour, cream, milk, water, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and crush the fins, chine, and small claws in a mortar, discarding the brown fin and the bag in the head.

  2. Combine the lobster meat, crumb of the roll, anchovies, herbs, lemon peel, and water in a stewpan.

  3. Simmer until the flavors are extracted.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Make the soup

  1. Pound the lobster spawn in a mortar with the butter, nutmeg, and flour.

  2. Mix in the cream and milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, adding the lobster tail meat cut into pieces.

Make the forcemeat and serve

  1. Make forcemeat balls with the remaining lobster, seasoned with mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add a little flour and breadcrumbs, and moisten with the egg.

  3. Heat the forcemeat balls in the soup and serve.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Supply the main meat and flavor for both the stock and the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the pounded lobster spawn.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the soup.
Milk
Thins the creamy base and adds mild sweetness and body.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the soup and helps bind the forcemeat mixture.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture. Straining removes the crushed shell fragments and solids, leaving a smooth stock. Skipping it leaves grit in the soup and a cloudy, coarse texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes