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Lobster Soup

A soup made with boiled lobster, sweet herbs, onion, celery, carrot, white stock, and French roll crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster meat into neat pieces and set aside.

  2. Beat the fins and minor claws in a mortar.

  3. Stew them slowly in a saucepan with the white stock.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sweet herbs, onion, celery, carrot, and toasted crust of the French roll to the stock.

  2. Season with salt and Cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer for about 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Return the liquid to the saucepan.

  6. Add the lobster pieces.

  7. Mix in the beaten coral with flour and gravy.

  8. Heat the soup for a few minutes without boiling.

  9. Serve hot.

Optional additions

  1. Optionally, boil a strip of lemon rind.

  2. Add nutmeg for extra flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the tender meat that makes up the body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with the beaten coral.
Gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the soup base.
French roll crust
Adds body to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Heat the soup without boiling. Once the thickened soup with beaten coral and flour reaches a boil, it can curdle or turn grainy and lose its smooth texture. Keeping it just below a simmer preserves a silky consistency.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lobster, onion, celery, carrot, pepper, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lobster, onion, celery, carrot, pepper, 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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