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Indian Lobster-soup

A thick white soup made with lobsters, curry powder, eggs, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Indian Lobster-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the stock for thick white soup and boil it.

  2. Remove the stock to the side of the fire to clarify.

Cook the lobster and soup

  1. Boil the lobsters in their own liquor for 12 minutes, then drain and remove the claws and tails.

  2. Pick the lobster meat and pound the shells, adding them to the soup along with the lobster liquor.

  3. Boil the soup for 20 minutes, skimming carefully, then pass it through a sieve into another pot.

Thicken and finish

  1. Thicken the soup with the curry powder diluted in cold water and boil for 5 to 6 more minutes.

  2. Thicken with a liaison of the eggs diluted with a little cream.

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 + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lobster + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Eggs
Thicken the soup as a liaison and give it a richer, silkier body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced flavour and, once diluted, lightly thickens the soup.
Lobsters
Provide the main flavour and the meat that goes into the soup.
Double cream
Enriches the liaison, adding fat for a smoother, rounder texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg liaison. If the eggs are added to a boiling soup they can scramble and turn grainy. Diluting them with cream and adding them off the heat or at a low simmer keeps the mixture smooth, because egg proteins set at high temperature.

“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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