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Crab Soup

A soup made from boiled crabs, bacon, milk, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Crab and pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 922 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crabs

  1. Boil 15 live crabs in water until cooked.

  2. Remove the meat from the crabs.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, boil 2 quarts of water with 1 pound of bacon.

  2. Heat 1 pint of rich milk and stir in 2 beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add the crab meat to the bacon broth.

  4. Pour in the milk mixture and cook for a few minutes without boiling.

  5. Season with salt and red pepper to taste.

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. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Crab + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together467 recipes

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

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Crab + milktop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main protein and sweet, briny flavor of the soup.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savory fat and flavor to the broth.
Rich milk
Gives the soup a creamy body and mild sweetness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture and add richness when heated gently.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk mixture and cook without boiling. Egg yolks in the milk can curdle and turn grainy if the soup boils after they are added. Keeping it just below a boil keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

“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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