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Cray Fish Soup

A soup made from crayfish shells, butter, anchovies, stock, French roll crumbs, lobster spawn, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cray Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the fish from the crayfish and set aside on two plates.

  2. In a pot, combine the crayfish shells with butter and anchovies, then pound well.

Make the soup

  1. Add 3 pints of stock and bring to a slow boil for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the pot.

  3. Add 3 more pints of stock and the crumb of the French rolls, then boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Run the soup through a tammy (fine sieve).

  5. Pound lobster spawn with a bit of butter and mix it into the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the soup to a small pot with the fish and keep warm without boiling.

  2. Taste and add cayenne pepper if needed.

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 + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Crayfish + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Gives the soup its main flavour and the fish that is returned to the bowl.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the shells and anchovies into the soup.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, salty background flavour that rounds out the shellfish.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that extracts flavour from the shells and thins the soup.
French roll crumb
Thickens the soup slightly and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Lobster spawn
Adds colour, richness and a deeper shellfish flavour when stirred into the soup.

The step that matters

Keep the soup warm without boiling. Boiling after the lobster spawn and butter are added can cause the emulsion to break and the soup to look greasy and separated. Gentle heat keeps it smooth.

“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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