Name: Crawfish Étouffée
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Ingredients: ½ cups Butter; 1 Large Onion, Minced; 1 Large Green Bell Pepper, Stem And Seeds Removed Then Minced; 2 stalks Celery, Chopped; 1 Tablespoon Garlic, Minced; 2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste; ½ teaspoons Hot Pepper Sauce (like Tabasco Or Cholula); 1 teaspoon Salt; ½ teaspoons White Pepper, Ground; ½ teaspoons Black Pepper, Ground; ½ teaspoons Cayenne Pepper Ground; 1 Tablespoon Flour; 1 Tablespoon Butter, Melted; ½ cups Seafood Stock; 1 pound Crawfish Tail Meat, Cooked

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pepper, celery, garlic, tomato, flour):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Cuminfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, celery, garlic, tomato, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Onion	1 medium (110g)	44
Bell Pepper	1 medium (119g)	31
Tomato	1 medium (123g)	22
Chili	1 tsp (2.7g)	8
Celery	1 stalk (40g)	6
Black Pepper	1 tsp ground (2.3g)	6
Garlic	1 clove (3g)	4
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Seed	not in our table	0
Sauce	not in our table	0
Meat	not in our table	0

Crawfish Étouffée