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Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster meat, shells, small fish, beef gravy, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Chop a lobster and add it to a pot with 1 quart of beef gravy and the shells of the lobster.

  2. Clean and cut small fish into pieces and add them to the pot.

  3. Boil the mixture gently for several hours.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Pound the coral of the lobster in a mortar with a small piece of the stock.

  2. Mix the pounded coral with chopped parsley, bread crumbs, and 1 egg to form forcemeat balls.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the stock, thicken it with butter and flour or cream, and warm the lobster meat in it.

  2. Serve the soup with the forcemeat balls.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sweet, delicate meat and flavour that defines the soup.
Beef gravy
Forms the savoury base liquid that the lobster and fish flavour during simmering.
Egg
Binds the parsley and bread crumbs so the forcemeat balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the forcemeat balls.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps thicken the stock when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock to give the soup a smoother, fuller body.

The step that matters

Boiling the stock gently for several hours. A gentle simmer extracts flavour from the shells and fish without clouding the broth. A hard rolling boil can emulsify fats and make the stock cloudy and greasy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lobster, fish, egg, bread, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lobster, fish, egg, bread, 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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