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Bisque Made From Crab

A crab bisque made by pounding crab flesh with rice, water, and cayenne pepper, then sieving and adding milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and lobster work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 196 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Bisque Made From Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Remove the flesh from the cooked crab and pound it in a mortar with the boiled rice, a little water, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve (tamis).

Finish and serve

  1. Add enough boiling milk or cream to achieve a smooth consistency.

  2. Pour the bisque into a hot tureen.

  3. If desired, stir in a small amount of lobster butter to give a bright red color.

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. Crab + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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

Cooked crab
Provides the main crab flavour and the body of the bisque.
Boiled rice
Thickens the mixture and gives it a smooth, full texture when pounded and sieved.
Boiling milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, loosening the purée to a smooth consistency.
Lobster butter
Adds fat and aroma and gives the bisque a bright red colour.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving breaks down and removes fibres and any stray shell fragments, so the bisque ends up smooth rather than gritty. Skipping or rushing this step leaves a coarse, uneven texture that no later addition can fully correct.

“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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