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Crab Soup

A soup made with chicken, crabs, butter, flour, cream, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken pieces and bones into a pot with 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Boil slowly until the liquid is reduced to 2 quarts.

  3. Strain the broth and return it to the pot.

  4. Add salt, black pepper, and red pepper to the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Carefully add the picked crab meat to the soup and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter with flour until smooth, then add the butter mixture to the boiling soup and stir well.

  3. Once it boils again, add the sweet cream and milk.

  4. Let it boil once more and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and sweet, tender body to the soup.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it body when stirred into the butter.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the broth's flavor and giving a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, thinning the soup to a smooth consistency.
Chicken
Supplies the base broth, with flavor and body from the bones and meat.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour mixed into butter and stirred into boiling liquid can clump if not whisked smoothly. Stirring well while it is hot disperses the starch so the soup thickens evenly.

“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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