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Crab Soup

A hearty soup made with crabs, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and soda crackers, seasoned with herbs and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Crab Soup

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 ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crabs

  1. Separate the fat from the back shell and bodies of the crabs, and clean them.

  2. Boil the claws and pick the meat from them.

Make the base

  1. In a large stew‑pan, heat the lard and butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and minced garlic; cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the crab claw meat and the cleaned crabs.

  5. Season with salt, black pepper, red pepper, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  6. Sift the grated soda crackers over the mixture.

  7. Add boiling water to reach the desired soup consistency.

Simmer and finish

  1. Allow to boil gently for 2 hours.

  2. Before serving, stir in the crab fat and add thyme, parsley, and sweet marjoram.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main meat and flavour of the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, forming the base of the soup.
Soda crackers
Thicken the soup as they soften and absorb liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the onion and garlic.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness through browning.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab flavour.

The step that matters

Allow to boil gently for 2 hours. Long, gentle simmering lets the crab shells and bodies release flavour and gelatin into the broth and blends the seasonings. A hard, rapid boil can break up the solids and make the soup cloudy and bitter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, onion, garlic, tomato, meat, pepper. 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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