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Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster, shrimp, chicken feet, veal or fish stock, vegetables, spices, and optional egg yolks and fish forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and break up the shell.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the lobster shell, small claws, and heads of the shrimp with enough water to cover them. Stew for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid and set it aside.

Make the stock

  1. Lightly brown the onions, carrot, turnip, mace, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, parsley, marjoram, and celery in a stewpan.

  2. Add the chicken feet and veal or fish stock. Stew for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the lobster meat into dice-sized pieces and set aside.

  2. Pound the cream and meat from the lobster head and coral with the picked shrimp.

  3. Season the mixture with cayenne, nutmeg, and a few drops of garlic vinegar.

  4. Mix in the reserved liquid from the shells.

  5. In a tureen, add the essence of anchovy.

  6. Skim and strain the soup.

  7. Mix in the reserved lobster pieces and pounded ingredients.

  8. Bring the soup to a boil and pour it into the tureen.

  9. Add the hard-boiled egg yolks and fish forcemeat balls if desired.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Lobster
Its meat provides the main body and flavour, and its shell and head give the stock its depth.
Shrimp
Their shells and picked meat add sweet, concentrated seafood flavour to the stock and pounded base.
Chicken feet
Their gelatin adds body and a silky mouthfeel to the stock.
Veal or fish stock
Forms the liquid base that the soup is built on.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Skim and strain the soup. Skimming removes coagulated proteins and fat that would cloud the broth and taste greasy, and straining removes fine solids so the soup stays clear and smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, shrimp, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, shrimp, onion, carrot, turnip, clove, parsley. 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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