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Lobster Soup

A veal‑broth base with vegetables and lobster, thickened with butter‑flour, finished with lime and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine veal broth, onions, celery, carrots, parsnips, sweet herbs, and anchovies or herring in a stewpan.

  2. Stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster meat to the strained broth.

  2. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling.

  4. Add lime juice and essence of anchovy.

  5. Serve in a tureen.

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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavour of the soup.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavour and tender pieces in the finished soup.
Butter and flour
Thicken the broth into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup as the flour cooks.
Anchovies or red herring
Add savoury depth to the broth, building umami behind the seafood flavour.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and lifts the lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Once the lobster meat and thickened broth are combined, a rolling boil can toughen the lobster and can cause the flour-thickened soup to break or turn grainy. A gentle simmer keeps the lobster tender and the texture smooth.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, celery, carrot, meat, lobster, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, celery, carrot, meat, lobster, butter. 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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