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Cream Crab Soup

A creamy soup made with crab, milk, onion, parsley, cayenne pepper, flour, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the milk, crab, onion, parsley, and cayenne pepper in a large pot and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the butter until smooth; add some of the hot milk to soften the mixture.

  3. Stir the flour mixture back into the pot and let it cook for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the beaten eggs.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the soup is built on.
Crab
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the milk.
Eggs
Beaten eggs stirred in at the end enrich and lightly thicken the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs in at the end. Eggs are added just before serving because prolonged heat can curdle them and make the soup grainy. Stir gently to keep the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, crab, parsley, pepper, flour, butter, egg. 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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