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Crayfish Soup

A soup made with crayfish, butter, anchovies, a French roll crumb, lobster spawn, stock, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crayfish and lobster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Crayfish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells

  1. Shell the crayfish and set the fish aside on a plate.

  2. Pound the shells with the butter and anchovies in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Add 1 pint of stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve and combine with the remaining stock and the crumb of the roll.

  3. Bring to a boil and stir through a tammy with the lobster spawn.

  4. Add the fish but do not boil the soup after this step.

  5. Season to taste.

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. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Crayfish + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Lobster + fishtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish shells
Pounded with butter and anchovies to release their flavour into the soup.
Butter
Carries the shell flavour and adds richness to the soup.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth that rounds out the shellfish flavour.
French roll crumb
Thickens the soup slightly and gives it body.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Do not boil the soup after adding the fish. Boiling toughens delicate crayfish flesh and can make it rubbery, so the fish should only be heated gently in the finished soup.

“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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