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Crab Soup

A soup made with chicken, crabs, butter, flour, cream, and milk.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the chicken pieces and bones into a pot with 1 gallon of cold water.

  2. Boil slowly until reduced to 2 quarts, then strain the broth back into the pot.

  3. Add salt, black pepper, and red pepper pod to the broth.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully add the picked crab meat to the soup and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the butter with flour until smooth, then add to the boiling soup.

  3. Once it boils again, stir in the sweet cream and milk.

  4. Let it boil once more and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  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

Chicken
Its bones and meat build the savory body of the broth.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and tender, delicate pieces throughout the soup.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the soup slightly and helps the butter blend smoothly into the liquid.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and body, giving the soup a fuller, creamier texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness while further softening the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and milk. Once dairy is added, the soup should only come to a gentle boil and be served promptly. Prolonged vigorous boiling can cause milk proteins to curdle or the texture to turn grainy, and the flour-thickened base can scorch on the bottom of the pot.

“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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