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Excellent Lobster Soup

A creamy soup made from lobster parts, water, French roll crumb, anchovies, onion, herbs, lemon peel, butter, nutmeg, flour, cream, and lobster balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Excellent Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Remove the brown fur and bag from the lobster heads.

  2. Beat the fins, chine, and small claws in a mortar.

  3. Boil the lobster parts gently in water with the French roll crumb, white pepper, salt, anchovies, onion, sweet herbs, and lemon peel until flavorful.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Make the soup

  1. Beat the lobster spawn with butter, nutmeg, and flour in a mortar.

  2. Mix the beaten spawn with cream.

  3. Cut the lobster tails into pieces.

  4. Boil the lobster tail pieces with the cream and strained soup.

Finish with forcemeat balls

  1. Make forcemeat balls from the remaining lobster, breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, and eggs.

  2. Heat the forcemeat balls in the soup before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Lobster
Provides the main flavor and the meat that gives the soup its body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Lobster spawn
Adds color and a rich, concentrated lobster flavor when beaten into the cream.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the beaten spawn.
Flour
Thickens the spawn mixture slightly so it blends smoothly into the cream.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat balls so they hold their shape while heating.

The step that matters

Boil the lobster parts gently. Boiling hard can cloud the broth and toughen the lobster. A gentle simmer extracts flavor while keeping the stock clear and the meat tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, onion, lemon, butter, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, onion, lemon, butter, nutmeg, flour. 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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