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Crab Soup

A soup made with rice, milk or stock, cinnamon, salt, pepper, butter, crab meat, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Wash the rice in one or two waters.

  2. Put the rice in a saucepan with the milk or stock, cinnamon, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Simmer gently until the rice is tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix in the pounded yellow pith from the crab and another quart of stock.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Pour it into a stewpan with the claw meat torn into flakes.

  4. Add the essence of anchovies and stir over heat until thoroughly heated, but do not boil.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down during simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and delicate flaked texture of the soup.
Milk or white stock
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and gives the soup its body.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the crab flavour.

The step that matters

Heating after the crab and anchovies are added. Once the crab and anchovy essence go in, boiling can toughen the delicate crab meat and make the soup grainy or curdled, so it should be heated gently only until hot.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, pepper, egg, butter, meat, crab):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, pepper, egg, butter, meat, crab. 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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