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Lobster Soup

A soup made from young hen lobsters, veal broth, butter, flour, lemon, anchovy, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Boil the lobsters until void, then remove the tails and claws.

  2. Crack the claws and cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.

  3. Remove the coral and soft part of the body; bruise some coral in a mortar.

  4. Pick out the fish from the chines and mix with the coral to make forcemeat balls, adding mace or nutmeg, grated lemon peel, anchovy, cayenne, and the egg yolk.

Make the broth and thicken

  1. In the veal broth, bruise the small legs and chine, then boil for 20 minutes and strain.

  2. To thicken, bruise the live spawn with butter and flour, rub through a sieve, and add to the soup with lobster meat and remaining coral.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling to maintain color.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen, adding lemon juice and essence of anchovy.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 meat and sweet, rich flavor of the soup.
Butter
Combined with flour to form a roux-like paste that thickens the soup.
Flour
Works with butter to bind and thicken the soup as it is added back in.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape while cooking.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the flavor of the bones and legs.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth and a salty, umami note to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling a thickened soup can break the butter and flour binding and dull its color. A gentle simmer keeps the texture smooth and the color bright.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, veal, butter, flour, lemon, anchovy, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, veal, butter, flour, lemon, anchovy, egg. 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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