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Cray Fish Soup

A broth of cold water, onions, carrots, parsley, peppercorns, and crayfish simmered with bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cray Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the crayfish in cold water until nearly boiling, then skim off the scum.

  2. Add onions, carrots, parsley, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

  3. Pound the crayfish shells and small claws, then boil them with the broth for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the broth and add bread crusts to thicken.

Finish the soup

  1. If available, pound the lobster spawn and add it to the soup.

  2. Let the soup simmer gently for 2 minutes, then add the crayfish to heat through.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main flavour and meat of the soup, with shells adding depth to the broth.
Bread crusts
Starch from the crusts helps thicken the strained broth.
Onions
Build savoury, aromatic flavour in the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after the first boil. Impurities that rise as the water heats cloud the broth and can taste bitter, so removing them early keeps the soup clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, crayfish, bread, lobster):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, crayfish, bread, lobster. 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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