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Lobster Soup

A hearty soup of cod, lobster, vegetables, and herbs, thickened with butter and flour, finished with egg yolks and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Wash and cut the cod into small pieces.

  2. Put the fish into a stewpan with onions, celery, turnips, carrots, parsnips, sweet herbs, anchovies, and water.

  3. Stew slowly for 2 hours, then strain the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the lobster flesh and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Form balls with fish pieces, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, butter, yolks of eggs, and anchovy.

  3. Add the balls to the soup.

  4. Add the crust of a French roll.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Simmer for 15 minutes before serving.

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

Cod
Breaks down into the stock, giving the soup its fish body and flavour.
Lobster flesh
Adds sweet, delicate shellfish flavour and tender pieces to the finished soup.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the strained stock into a smoother, heavier soup when cooked with butter.
Egg yolks
Bind the fish and crumb balls so they hold their shape in the soup.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the fish balls into a soft texture.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and stirred into the hot soup to avoid lumps and a raw floury taste, since starch only thickens properly when it is well dispersed and heated.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, lobster, butter, flour. 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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