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Crab Bisque

A creamy soup made with crab meat, milk, butter, onions, pepper, tomato, and fried bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the vegetables and crab

  1. Melt the plain butter in a saucepan over low heat, avoiding a hiss.

  2. Add the minced onions, pepper, and tomato; season with salt and pepper, cover, and stew for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the crab meat and a little boiling water to prevent sticking, then stew for 10 minutes.

Finish the bisque

  1. In a separate vessel, heat the milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  2. Thicken the milk with the floured butter and season with salt and cayenne.

  3. Remove the saucepan from heat and stir in the thickened milk.

  4. Pour the bisque over the fried bread cubes in a tureen.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  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

Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and the substance of the bisque.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the bisque is built on.
Flour
Thickens the milk with the floured butter, giving the bisque body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they stew down into the base.
Tomato
Adds acidity and body as it softens with the onions and pepper.
Green sweet pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor to the stewed base.

The step that matters

Stirring the thickened milk into the pan off the heat. Adding the hot thickened milk to a boiling mixture can make it curdle or separate. Removing the pan from heat first lets the milk blend in smoothly and keeps the texture even.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, milk, butter, flour, onion, pepper. 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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