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Excellent Lobster Soup

A rich soup made from lobster parts, water, French roll crumb, anchovies, onion, herbs, lemon peel, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Excellent Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the claws, bodies, and tails of the lobsters, discarding the brown fur and the bag in the head.

  2. Beat the fins, chine, and small claws in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the lobster parts gently in 2 quarts of water with the French roll crumb, white pepper, salt, anchovies, onion, sweet herbs, and lemon peel until flavorful.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Beat the lobster spawn with a bit of butter, nutmeg, and flour in a mortar, then mix with 1 quart of cream.

  4. Cut the lobster tails into pieces and boil them with the cream and strained soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with force-meat balls made from the remaining lobster, mace, pepper, salt, crumbs, and 1-2 eggs, mixed with a bit of flour and heated in the soup.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the tender meat that finishes the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Eggs
Bind the force-meat balls so they hold their shape in the soup.
Flour
Thickens the lobster spawn butter and helps the soup body.
French roll crumb
Adds body and helps lightly thicken the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the lobster tails with the cream. Lobster meat turns tough and rubbery when overcooked, so the tails should simmer gently only until just cooked through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, onion, parsley, lemon, cream, nutmeg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, onion, parsley, lemon, cream, nutmeg. 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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