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Cray-fish Soup

A soup made from crayfish, butter, stock, and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cray-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine crayfish, salt, and water in a pot.

  2. Remove the tails.

Make the jus

  1. Pound the remaining parts in a mortar with butter.

  2. Transfer the pounded crayfish to a frying pan and fry with more butter.

  3. Add stock and press the mixture through a fine sieve to create the jus.

Finish the soup

  1. Pound the shells finely and fry them, then add to the stock.

  2. Layer fried bread in a stewpan, pour in the stock mixture, and add the crayfish juice.

  3. Stew until fully cooked.

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. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Crayfish + breadtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main protein and the sweet, shellfish flavour that defines the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and adds richness when the crayfish is fried.
Stock
Liquid base that carries the crayfish flavour through the soup.
Fried bread
Absorbs the stock and gives the soup body and a softer, thicker texture.

The step that matters

Frying the pounded crayfish in butter. Butter browns and can scorch quickly over direct heat, which turns the flavour bitter. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring lets the proteins and sugars brown gently, building aroma without burning.

“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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