Why it works: Crayfish and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓
Crayfish Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Pound the remains and shells of cooked crayfish very finely.
Add an equal weight of butter and strain through a fine sieve.
Strain again through a tammy to remove any shell particles.
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.
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Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together343 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Crayfish remains and shells
- Provide the concentrated shellfish flavour and colour that the butter carries.
- Butter
- Carries the crayfish flavour and colour as a fat, giving the butter its smooth richness.
The step that matters
Straining through a tammy. Fine shell particles left in the butter make it gritty and can taste harsh. Straining twice, first through a fine sieve and then through a tammy, removes them so the butter stays smooth.
“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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