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Martha Washington Crab Soup

A crab soup made with boiled corned pork, crab meat, milk, egg yolks, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Martha Washington Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the corned pork in water for one hour.

  2. Let the stock cool completely, then skim off the fat.

  3. Reheat the stock and add the crab meat; cook for 30 minutes.

Finish the soup

  1. Heat the milk in a separate saucepan, then remove from heat.

  2. Gradually pour the hot milk onto the beaten egg yolks, stirring constantly.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the crab and stock in a bowl.

  4. Season to taste with salt and cayenne.

  5. Set the bowl in boiling water for five minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 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 flavour and the soup's core substance.
Corned pork
Flavours the stock as it simmers in the boiling water.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture into a richer, silkier body when gently heated.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's overall texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the egg yolks. Pouring hot milk into egg yolks too quickly, or without constant stirring, can scramble the yolks. Adding the hot liquid gradually and stirring keeps the yolks evenly warmed so they thicken the soup smoothly.

“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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