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Prawn Soup

A savory soup made with prawns, vegetables, and a light broth flavored with wine, lemon, and anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine minced onions, carrot, celery, butter, bay leaf, parsley, and thyme in a saucepan.

  2. Steam gently for 15 minutes, shaking occasionally to prevent burning.

  3. Pour in the broth or water.

  4. Mix flour with a little cold water to form a smooth paste. Gradually add the flour paste to the saucepan.

  5. Stir the mixture over heat until it boils. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

  6. Strain the soup.

Make the prawn stock

  1. In another saucepan, combine prawn bodies and shells with a little stock and light wine. Stew for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid into the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup with cayenne, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and anchovy sauce.

  2. Add the picked prawns. Boil for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Serve very 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.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup as it boils.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the aromatics' flavour into the soup.
Prawns
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture in the finished soup.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base as they soften gently in the butter.
Light wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the prawn stock.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the simmering base. Adding flour paste without stirring can leave lumps, because starch clumps when it hits hot liquid. Stir steadily as it boils so the starch disperses and thickens the soup evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, flour, wine):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, celery, butter, parsley, thyme, flour, wine. 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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