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Crab Soup

A creamy crab soup made with water, onion, mace, parsley, cayenne pepper, salt, crabs, milk, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, bring 1 pint of water to a boil with the onion, mace, parsley, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  2. Add 1 quart of picked crabs, 1 quart of rich milk, and 1 quart of cream.

  3. In a bowl, rub ¼ pound of butter into 1 tablespoon of flour, then stir this mixture into the soup.

  4. Let the soup come to a good boil and 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.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Picked crabs
Provides the main seafood body and sweet, delicate flavor of the soup.
Milk
Adds liquid and creamy body, softening the broth's texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and with flour helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the soup. Flour mixed with butter forms a roux-like paste that thickens liquid only when dispersed evenly. Stirring it in as clumps can leave lumps, and the thickening starts only once the liquid is hot enough to swell the starch.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, parsley, pepper, crab, milk, cream, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, pepper, crab, milk, cream, butter. 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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