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Lobster Soup

A soup made from boiled lobster, white stock, herbs, onion, celery, carrot, and toasted French roll crust, seasoned with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Remove all the meat from the lobster and cut it into neat pieces.

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

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crushed lobster parts with white stock, sweet herbs, onion, celery, carrot, and toasted crust.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper, then simmer for about an hour.

  3. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the saucepan.

  4. Optionally, boil a strip of lemon rind in the stock and add nutmeg for extra flavor.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lobster meat and mix in the crushed coral with a little flour and gravy.

  2. Heat gently for a few minutes without boiling, then serve hot.

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

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

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 tender meat that is added at the end.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavors of the soup.
Toasted crust of a french roll
Adds body and thickens the soup as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and depth to the simmered base.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once the lobster meat and coral are added, boiling can toughen the delicate lobster meat and cause the thickened mixture to separate or curdle. Keeping the heat gentle preserves a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, celery, carrot, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, celery, carrot, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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