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Coukt-boullion of Soft Shell Crabs

A bouillon made with soft shell crabs, tomatoes, stock, and herbs, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Coukt-boullion of Soft Shell Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the crabs by removing the sand bag from between the eyes and the dead fingers from under each end of the shell.

Make the bouillon

  1. Heat the butter and olive oil in a pot, then add garlic, onion, thyme, bay leaves, browned flour, red pepper, tomatoes, stock, and cloves.

  2. Cook for about 45 minutes.

  3. Add the crabs and beaten eggs, then cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in Worcestershire sauce and claret wine.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over buttered toast.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

  5. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft shell crabs
Form the main body of the dish, cooking through in the simmering bouillon.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and body, forming the base of the simmered sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the bouillon as they set when cooked into the hot liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Claret wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the bouillon.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and adds fat to the pot for cooking the aromatics.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the hot bouillon. Eggs set when heated, so if the bouillon is too hot or stirred poorly, the eggs can curdle into lumps instead of gently thickening the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, olive, tomato, thyme, parsley, butter, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, olive, tomato, thyme, parsley, butter, wine. 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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