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A Lobster Soup

A soup made with codlings, lobster, vegetables, herbs, anchovies, and thickened with butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Wash and cut the codlings into pieces.

  2. Place the fish in a stewpan with onion, celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, sweet herbs, and anchovies.

  3. Add 2 quarts of water.

  4. Stew slowly for 2 hours.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the lobster meat cut into small pieces.

  2. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Form balls with fish, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, butter, yolks of eggs, and 1 anchovy.

  4. Add the balls to the soup along with the crust of a French roll.

  5. Season to taste.

  6. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  7. Serve hot 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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Codlings
Provide the fish body that flavours the stock and the fish balls.
Lobster meat
Adds its sweet, distinctive flavour and tender pieces to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Bind the fish balls together and enrich the texture.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and help hold the fish balls together.
Anchovies
Deepen the savoury, salty flavour of the stock.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or it stays raw-tasting and lumpy. Adding it in small amounts while stirring keeps the soup smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, carrot, parsnip, 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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