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Lobster Soup

A hearty soup made with veal broth, vegetables, sweet herbs, anchovies or herring, lobster meat, and thickened with butter and flour, finished with lime.

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 the soup

  1. Add the lobster meat to the strained soup.

  2. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour.

  3. If there is any lobster spawn, bruise it with a little flour and butter.

  4. Rub the bruised spawn through a sieve and add to the soup.

  5. Let the soup simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling.

  6. Turn the soup into a tureen.

  7. Add lime juice and essence of anchovy.

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
Provides the main liquid and body for the soup.
Lobster meat
Supplies the main flavour and tender pieces of seafood to the soup.
Butter and flour
Thicken the soup into a smoother, richer body.
Anchovies or red herring
Adds savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Once the lobster and spawn are in, a gentle simmer keeps the soup smooth and prevents the thickened base from breaking or curdling, while the lobster stays tender instead of toughening.

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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