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Lobster Chowder

A creamy soup made with lobster, milk, crackers, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add the green part of the lobster to a pot with 1 quart of boiling milk.

  2. Stir in 4 pounded crackers.

  3. Add the chopped lobster, ¼ cup butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Lobster + milktop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together489 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender pieces of meat.
Crackers
Their starch thickens the milk as it heats and gives the chowder body.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the other ingredients cook into.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the broth.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of the pot, especially with starchy crackers in it. Stirring while it heats keeps the milk from sticking and burning. Starch from the crackers thickens as the mixture heats, so the chowder should be watched and stirred until it reaches a steady boil.

“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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