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Cold Lobster Soufflés

A chilled lobster soufflé made with cream, mayonnaise, lemon, aspic jelly, and optional shrimp or lobster butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Cold Lobster Soufflés

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the lobster with thick cream, mayonnaise, cayenne, lemon juice, and cold aspic jelly.

  2. Whisk the mixture over ice until well combined.

  3. Add more sauce, shrimps, and lobster butter if using.

Set and serve

  1. Pipe the mixture into paper or china souffle cases, filling to the top.

  2. Chill in an ice cave for at least 30 minutes until firm.

  3. Remove the papers and serve garnished with sieved egg yolk, chopped white, or parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lobster + shrimptop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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 soufflé.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the mixture.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and emulsified body, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Aspic jelly
Sets when cold, giving the soufflé the firmness it needs to hold its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Whisking over ice. Whisking over ice keeps the mixture cold so the aspic stays partly set and the cream and mayonnaise do not separate or turn loose. Cold mixing lets the mixture trap air and hold its volume until it chills firm.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, cream, pepper, lemon, shrimp):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, cream, pepper, lemon, shrimp. 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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