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Crab Soup

A soup made with butter, flour, fish stock, lobster, wine, lemon, anchovy, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan until just browned.

  2. Mix in the flour.

  3. Stir in the fish stock or water and bring to a boil.

  4. Let it simmer, then add the bruised lobster.

  5. Pass the mixture through a tammy.

  6. Skim off any fat.

  7. Add a little white wine, lemon juice, anchovy, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Place the cut lobster meat in a tureen and pour the hot soup over it.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns slightly and adds a nutty richness to the base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich soup when cooked with the butter.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the tender meat that is added at the end.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the seafood flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat. Fat from the butter and lobster rises to the surface and can make the soup greasy and dull on the palate. Removing it after straining gives a cleaner, lighter texture.

“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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