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Potage De Lucines Papillons Aux Crabes D'huitres- Soft Clam Soup with Oyster Crabs

A French soup made with soft clams, oyster crabs, and a béchamel base, seasoned with salt, mace, cayenne, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and crab share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Potage De Lucines Papillons Aux Crabes D'huitres- Soft Clam Soup with Oyster Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Combine the soft clams, chicken broth, clam broth, and oyster broth in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off the scum.

  3. Let the soup simmer for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the béchamel sauce.

  5. Season with salt, mace, cayenne, and sugar.

Add the oyster crabs and finish

  1. Pick the oyster crabs.

  2. Plunge the oyster crabs in boiling water for 1 minute.

  3. Drain the oyster crabs.

  4. Add the oyster crabs to the soup.

  5. Finish the soup with boiling cream and butter.

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. Clam + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Clam + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture in the soup.
Béchamel sauce
Thickens the soup and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and body, softening the soup's flavor and texture.
Oyster crabs
Contribute their delicate, briny seafood flavor and tender bite.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling cream and butter. Cream and butter can separate or curdle if the soup is kept at a hard boil after they go in. Adding them off the heat or at a gentle simmer keeps the emulsion smooth and the soup velvety.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, chicken, oyster, sauce, pepper, sugar, crab):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, chicken, oyster, sauce, pepper, sugar, crab. 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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