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River Crayfish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

River Crayfish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the crayfish until cooked.

  2. Grind cumin, pepper, alisander, parsley, and dried mint together.

  3. Mix the ground spices with honey, vinegar, and garum.

  4. Serve the crayfish with the spice mixture.

  5. Optionally, add a few drops of liquid perfume for flavor.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cumin + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together821 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cumin + minttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + minttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

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

  5. Cumin + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, cumin, pepper, parsley, honey, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, cumin, pepper, parsley, honey, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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