Skip to main content
Main

Crab Bisque

A creamy crab bisque made with boiled crab meat, milk, butter, onions, pepper, tomato, and fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Crab Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Melt the plain butter in a saucepan over low heat without letting it hiss.

  2. Add the minced onions, pepper, and tomato to the hot butter.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, cover, and stew for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the crab meat and a little boiling water to prevent sticking.

  5. Stew for an additional 10 minutes.

Make the milk thickening

  1. In a separate vessel, heat the milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Thicken the milk with the floured butter.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne.

Combine and serve

  1. Remove the saucepan from heat and stir in the thickened milk.

  2. Pour the bisque over the fried bread cubes in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and body of the bisque.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the bisque thickens into.
Butter
Carries flavor and adds richness to the onions and the thickening.
Flour
Thickens the milk when cooked with the butter, giving the bisque body.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory aromatic base as they stew in butter.
Baking soda (in the method)
Added to the hot milk, it is a minor ingredient used in heating the milk.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with the floured butter. Flour must be cooked with fat and liquid long enough to swell and thicken smoothly; adding it too quickly or without heating can leave lumps or a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, milk, butter, flour, onion, 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.

You might also like

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes