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Excellent Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster meat, cream, and seasonings, finished with lobster balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 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; discard 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 gently in 2 quarts of water with the crumb of a French roll, white pepper, salt, anchovies, onion, sweet herbs, and lemon peel until flavorful.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Beat the lobster spawn with butter, nutmeg, and flour in a mortar.

  4. Mix the batter with 1 quart of cream.

  5. Cut lobster tails into pieces.

  6. Boil the pieces in the cream and soup mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Make forcemeat balls from the remaining lobster meat, mace, pepper, salt, crumbs, and 1-2 eggs, binding with flour.

  2. Heat the balls in the soup before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Lobsters
Provide the main meat and flavor of the soup.
Eggs
Help bind the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the soup.
French roll
Its crumb thickens the broth and gives it body.
Flour
Helps bind the spawn batter and the forcemeat balls.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the lobster spawn mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the pieces in the cream and soup mixture. Lobster meat cooks quickly and turns tough and rubbery if overcooked, so it should be heated just until done while the cream is kept from boiling hard and curdling.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, onion, lemon, cream, butter, nutmeg, flour. 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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