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Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster or crayfish, fish stock, milk, cornflour, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. If using crayfish, remove all the white meat.

  2. Boil the shells in the fish stock for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the shells out.

Make the soup

  1. Thicken the stock with cornflour.

  2. Pour in the milk.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Cut the lobster into small pieces and add to the soup.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  6. Flavour with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Pour into a warm tureen.

  2. Serve with fried bread.

  3. Wash the shells well in cold water before adding them to the soup.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lobster + fishtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main sweet, meaty flavour and the chunks of protein in the soup.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the seafood flavour through the whole soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a softer, creamier mouthfeel to the broth.
Cornflour
Thickens the stock as its starch swells when heated, giving the soup body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the seafood flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Thicken the stock with cornflour. Cornflour must be fully mixed into the liquid and heated so its starch swells and thickens evenly. Added dry or left unheated, it clumps and leaves the soup floury.

“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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