Skip to main content
Main

Lobster Soup

A lobster soup made with milk, boiling water, corn starch, salt, butter, mace, cayenne pepper, and lobster pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lobster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over boiling water until it boils.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in a little cold water, then stir into the boiling milk.

Cook the lobster

  1. Cut the lobster into very small pieces and place in a pint of boiling water with salt, mace, cayenne pepper, and butter.

  2. Boil until the lobster is cooked through.

Combine and finish

  1. Strain the lobster mixture and pour into the thickened milk.

  2. Pound the coral finely and add it to the soup for a pretty pink color.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Supplies the main meaty texture and sweet flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the thickener sets into.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk as its granules swell, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Dissolving the corn starch. Starch dispersed in cold water hydrates evenly, while dry starch dropped into hot liquid clumps. Once heated, the granules swell and thicken the milk, so the mixture should be stirred as it is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, milk, corn, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, milk, corn, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipes