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Lobster Soup

A thickened lobster soup made with veal broth, butter, flour, egg yolk, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, anchovy essence, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Boil the lobsters until cooked.

  2. Let the lobsters cool.

  3. Split the tails, remove the meat, and crack the claws.

  4. Cut the lobster meat into small pieces and set the pieces aside.

  5. Remove the coral and soft parts from the body.

  6. Bruise part of the coral in a mortar.

  7. Pick out the meat from the chines.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Mix the meat with the coral.

  2. Make forcemeat balls by combining the lobster mixture with mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, anchovy, cayenne, and the egg yolk.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the veal broth with the bruised small legs and chines for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Bruise the live spawn with butter and flour.

  4. Rub the bruised spawn through a sieve into the broth.

  5. Add the lobster meat and remaining coral to the soup.

  6. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling.

  7. Transfer to a tureen.

  8. Add lemon juice and anchovy essence.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 coral that give the soup its flavour and body.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat mixture so it holds together in balls.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and carries flavour from the spawn.
Flour
Thickens the spawn mixture so it blends smoothly into the broth.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying all the other flavours.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling can toughen the lobster meat and cause the egg yolk and butter-flour mixture to separate or curdle, so the soup should only simmer.

Swap the mace

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

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

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