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Bisque of Crab

A creamy crab bisque made with crab meat, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bisque of Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the crab meat finely and season with salt, pepper, onion juice, and nutmeg.

  2. Add melted butter and stale bread crumbs to the crab mixture.

  3. Pour hot milk over the mixture.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a soup kettle.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes.

Finish

  1. Strain the soup, then heat again.

  2. Adjust seasoning if needed before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and the substance of the bisque.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the soup into a fuller body.
Hot milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Heating the soup again. Milk-based soups can scorch on the bottom or separate if they boil hard. Reheat gently over moderate heat and stir so the milk stays smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, crab, flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, flour, butter, pepper, nutmeg, bread. 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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