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Lobster Soup

A soup made with veal knuckle broth, lobster meat, and a mixture of spices and force‑meat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal in enough water to cover it until the meat is reduced to rags.

  2. Strain the broth.

  3. Boil the lobsters, then extract all the meat from the body and claws.

Make the force-meat balls

  1. In a mortar, bruise part of the coral and an equal quantity of lobster meat. Mix well.

  2. Add mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and grated lemon peel to the mixture.

  3. Form into force-meat balls, binding with the beaten egg yolk.

Finish and serve

  1. In a pot, combine 3 quarts of veal broth with the lobster meat cut into mouthfuls. Boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Thicken the soup with the remaining coral, rubbed through a sieve, and add the force-meat balls and butter rolled in flour.

  3. Simmer gently for 10 minutes without boiling to preserve the color.

  4. Pour into a tureen and serve immediately.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 tender meat that forms the body of the soup.
Egg yolk
Binds the force-meat balls so they hold their shape during cooking.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savory body into the broth as it cooks down.
Flour
Thickens the soup when rolled with butter and stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body to the thickened soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling vigorously can toughen the lobster and break the thickened soup, and it dulls the color, so keep the soup at a gentle simmer.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lobster, nutmeg, lemon, egg, butter, 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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