Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster, fish stock, milk, butter, flour, and vegetables, finished with quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the vegetables.

  2. Fry them in the butter until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add the stock.

  5. Stir until it boils.

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the shell from the lobster.

  2. Cut the meat from the claws into dice. Set aside.

Simmer and strain

  1. Add the bouquet garni.

  2. Add the rest of the lobster.

  3. Add the pounded shell to the stock.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

  5. Remove the shell.

  6. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  7. Return the liquid to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk.

  2. Heat until near boiling.

  3. Add the quenelles.

  4. Add the anchovy essence.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Place the lobster dice in a tureen.

  7. Pour the soup over them.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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

Butter
Frying the vegetables in butter builds a pale brown, savoury flavour base.
Flour
Stirred into the fried vegetables and butter, it thickens the stock into a smooth body.
Lobster
Supplies the main sweet, rich seafood flavour and tender meat for the soup.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the vegetables and lobster shell.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup near the end.
Carrot, turnip and celery
Provide sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook slowly in the stock.

The step that matters

Frying the vegetables until pale brown. Browning the vegetables gently in butter builds flavour, but over-browning turns them bitter and dark. Stop when they are pale brown, then add the flour so it cooks briefly without scorching.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, milk, butter, flour, carrot, turnip):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, milk, butter, flour, carrot, turnip. 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

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes