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Lobster Soto

A Filipino lobster soup with a broth made from lobster meat, spawn, and butter, served with lobster spawn balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lobster Soto

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Extract the meat from the shells of the boiled lobsters and set the spawn aside.

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

  3. Place the meat and beaten fins in a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and simmer until the flavor is extracted.

  4. Strain the liquid into a separate pot.

  5. In a mortar, beat the spawn with flour and butter, then rub it through a sieve into the strained soup.

  6. Simmer the soup without boiling for 10 minutes to preserve the color.

  7. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add a little essence of anchovies.

Make and serve the force-meat balls

  1. For serving, make force-meat balls from minced lobster spawn, French roll crumbs, egg, and pounded mace.

  2. Roll the balls in flour and serve them 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Hen lobsters
Provide the meat and shells that give the soup its main lobster flavor.
Lobster spawn
Its colour and rich flavour thicken and colour the soup when rubbed through a sieve.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping bind the spawn into the soup.
Flour
Helps thicken the soup and bind the spawn mixture.
Egg
Binds the force-meat balls so they hold their shape.
French roll crumb
Adds bulk and softness to the force-meat balls, keeping them tender.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling can break down the delicate colour and texture of the spawn-thickened soup, so it should stay at a gentle simmer for the stated 10 minutes.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, flour, butter, lemon, egg. 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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