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Lobster Soup

A soup made with lobster, fish stock, milk, butter, flour, and sliced vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery 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 base

  1. Slice the vegetables and fry them in the butter until pale brown.

  2. Stir in the flour, add the stock, and stir until it boils.

  3. Remove the shell from the lobster, cut the meat from the claws into dice, and set aside.

Make the soup

  1. Add the bouquet‑garni, the rest of the lobster, and the pounded shell to the stock, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the shell and strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the liquid to the saucepan, add the milk, and heat until near boiling.

  4. Add the quenelles, anchovy essence, and season to taste.

Serve

  1. Place the lobster dice in a tureen and pour the soup over them.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 sweet meat that is diced and served in the soup.
Butter
Fat that softens and browns the vegetables, building a rich base flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the lobster and vegetables.

The step that matters

Heating the milk. Once the milk is added, the soup should only be heated until near boiling; boiling hard can cause the milk to curdle and make the soup grainy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, milk, butter, flour, carrot, turnip):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, milk, butter, flour, carrot, turnip. 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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