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Crab Soup

A soup made from crab meat, tomatoes, onions, butter, and water, served with sherry and sliced lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the onions in butter until light brown.

  2. Pick the meat from the crab claws.

  3. Crush the bodies with all their fat in a soup kettle.

Make the soup

  1. Add the tomatoes and water.

  2. Boil for one hour.

  3. Strain the soup.

  4. Pour it over the crab meat.

Serve

  1. Serve with sherry and sliced lemons.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Crab + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Crab + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together100 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main meat and the fat that flavours the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its base flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth when fried until light brown.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and adds richness to the frying step.

The step that matters

Boil for one hour. A long, gentle boil extracts flavour from the crushed shells and fat. Too little time leaves the soup thin and weakly flavoured, while a hard boil can reduce it too much.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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