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Soup

Puree, or Lobster Soto

A lobster purée soup made with lobster meat, anchovies, stock, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Puree, or Lobster Soto

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the meat from the lobsters and chop it finely.

  2. Pound the lobster meat until smooth.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the lobster shells in the second stock for a while.

  2. Strain the stock into the pounded lobster meat.

  3. Boil the mixture until tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Stir in the cream and season with cayenne pepper, sugar, salt, and lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lobster + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 main flavour and the body of the soup.
Anchovies
Adds a savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.
Second stock
Carries the flavour of the shells and becomes the soup's liquid base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and sharpness with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked mixture through a fine sieve removes fibrous bits and fine shell fragments, giving a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the soup gritty.

“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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