Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup

A creamy soup made with lobster meat, broth, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Pick out all the meat from the lobsters.

  2. Cut the lobster meat into pieces the size of a nut.

  3. Make some forcemeat balls with part of the lobster meat.

  4. Beat the soft meat and coral with a bit of butter in a mortar.

  5. Gradually add the cream, flour, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  6. Remove the brown juicy parts from the claws and head.

  7. Beat the shells and small claws in a mortar.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the shells in the broth for 20 minutes with the crumb of a French roll.

  2. Strain the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Return the strained broth to the pot with the lobster meat and forcemeat balls.

  2. Let it simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling.

  3. Add the essence of anchovy, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt to the tureen if needed.

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 + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobsters
Provide the main meat, coral and spawn that give the soup its flavour and colour.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the mixture slightly, giving body to the lobster paste.
Veal or chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the shells and meat.
French roll crumb
Adds body and helps thicken the broth as it boils with the shells.
Essence of anchovy
Adds savoury depth, rounding out the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling a cream-based soup can cause the cream to separate and curdle and can toughen the delicate lobster meat. Keeping the heat low for the 10 minutes preserves a smooth texture.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes