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Crab Soup

A savory soup made with veal, crab meat, milk, rice, and seasonings, served hot with lemon, crackers, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the chopped veal with cold water and boil down to half.

  2. Strain, cool, skim, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add nutmeg and anchovy paste to the broth.

Add rice and crab

  1. Return the broth to the fire with the rice and simmer until the rice breaks apart.

  2. Strain the mixture, rubbing the rice through a sieve.

  3. Add the crab meat cut into small dice and simmer for 10 more minutes without boiling.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Pour into a tureen and add the boiling milk thickened with floured butter.

  3. Stir well and serve with sliced lemon, crackers, and butter.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Gives the broth its body and meaty flavor as it boils down.
Boiled rice
Breaks down during simmering to thicken the soup and add body.
Crab meat
Supplies the main seafood flavor and tender, flaky texture.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the broth's savory edge.
Floured butter
Thickens the milk added at the end, giving a smooth, velvety body.

The step that matters

Simmer the crab without boiling. Boiling toughens delicate crab meat and can cause the milk to curdle or separate, so the soup should stay just below a boil.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Celeryfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, meat, crab, milk, anchovy, rice. 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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