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Bisque of Crabs

A creamy soup made from boiled crabs, butter, rice, herbs, and stock, finished with egg yolk and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Bisque of Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs for 30 minutes, then drain and let cool.

  2. Break apart the crabs and carefully pick out the meat, saving the fat from the upper shell for deviled crabs.

  3. In a mortar, combine the under shell, claws, butter, and boiled rice; pound until smooth.

Make the soup

  1. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and add salt, herbs, peppercorns, mace, and stock; boil slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the soup through a sieve, pressing as much pulp through as possible.

  3. Keep the soup warm on the stove without boiling.

  4. Beat the egg yolk and slowly add it to the warm milk, then whisk the milk into the soup; taste for seasoning.

Serve

  1. In a separate pot, briefly heat the crab meat in boiling water, then drain.

  2. Place the crab meat in a hot soup tureen and pour the soup over it; serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

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

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-shell crabs
Provide the shells and body meat that flavour the stock and give the bisque its base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
Boiled rice
Acts as a starch that thickens the soup and helps it hold a smooth body when pressed through a sieve.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup, carrying the flavour extracted from the crab shells.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the milk, giving the finished soup a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour, mellowing its body.

The step that matters

Keep the soup warm without boiling. Egg yolk is added to the milk and then to the soup. Boiling can curdle the yolk and make the soup grainy, so heat must stay gentle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, rice, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, rice, egg, milk. 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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