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Yachting Soup

A soup made with crayfish, peas, French roll, and herbs, simmered and served with crusted roll and crayfish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Yachting Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil water with onion, cloves, sweet herbs, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Reserve 20 crayfish.

  3. Pick the rest from shells, saving tails whole.

  4. Pound bodies and shells in a mortar with peas.

  5. Add to boiling water.

  6. Stew for 10-15 minutes.

  7. Strain the mixture.

  8. Set the strained soup over low heat.

  9. Add sliced French roll.

  10. Stew until the roll is half dissolved.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour.

  3. Add an onion to prevent burning.

  4. Add crayfish tails and 1 pint of the soup.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Remove the onion.

  7. Fry the reserved crayfish and the second French roll until brown.

  8. Combine all soup.

  9. Serve in a dish with the roll in the center and crayfish around.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provide the main flavour and protein, with tails as the featured meat.
Peas
Add body and a sweet, earthy flavour when pounded into the broth.
French roll
Soaked and dissolved into the soup, it thickens and gives a smooth body.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and adding the onion. Flour cooked in butter must be stirred continuously so it does not scorch or clump, and the onion placed in the pan helps prevent burning, as the record directs.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, crayfish, peas, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, crayfish, peas, butter, flour. 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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