Skip to main content
Soup

Prawn Soup

A soup made from prawns, their shells stewed in vinegar and water, thickened with bread crumbs and seasoned with anchovy sauce or mushroom ketchup.

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

Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the prawn stock

  1. Pick out the tails of the prawns and place the bodies in a stewpan with the mace, vinegar, and the same amount of water.

  2. Stew for 30 minutes and strain the liquid.

Make the soup

  1. In a clean stewpan, combine the fish stock or water with the strained liquid.

  2. Pound the prawns with the crumbs of the roll moistened with a little soup, then rub through a fine sieve.

  3. Gradually mix the prawn mixture into the soup, adding ketchup or anchovy sauce and lemon juice to taste.

  4. When heated through, add a few picked prawns and serve.

  5. If the soup is not thick enough, stir in a little butter and flour.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  3. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Prawns
Provide the main flavour and, when pounded, body to the soup.
French roll crumbs
Soak up liquid and help thicken the pounded prawn mixture.
Fish stock or water
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that helps draw flavour out of the prawn shells during stewing.
Butter and flour (in the method)
Thicken the soup into a smoother, richer body if it is too thin.

The step that matters

Rub the pounded prawns through a fine sieve. Straining removes fibrous bits and shell fragments so the soup stays smooth. Pounding and sieving also release and distribute the prawn flavour and body evenly, so the soup does not turn gritty or patchy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, anchovy, vinegar, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, anchovy, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes