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Lobster Soup

A creamy soup made with lobster meat, broth, cream, flour, and seasonings, finished with anchovy essence and lemon juice.

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. Remove the meat from the lobsters and cut it into nut-sized pieces.

  2. Make force-meat balls with part of the lobster meat.

  3. In a mortar, beat the soft meat and coral with a bit of butter.

  4. Gradually add the cream, flour, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  5. Remove the brown juicy parts from the claws and head of the lobsters.

  6. Crush the shells and small claws in a mortar.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the crushed shells in the broth with the crumb of the French roll for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the broth and return it to the pot with the lobster meat and force-meat balls.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling.

  2. Serve in a tureen and add essence of anchovy, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt if needed.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main flavour and the tender meat and coral that thicken and enrich the soup.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it blends smoothly into the soup.
Veal or chicken broth
Forms the liquid base, carrying flavour from the shells and meat.
French roll crumb
Soaks up and helps thicken the broth as it simmers with the shells.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a savoury, salty depth that rounds out the lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling. Boiling a cream-based soup can cause it to separate or curdle and can toughen the delicate lobster meat, so keep the heat low once the cream is added.

“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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