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Crawfish Bisque

A bisque made by boiling crawfish with water, salt, pepper, parsley, and onion, then cooling and removing flesh.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crawfish Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the crawfish

  1. Boil the crawfish in a small quantity of water seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, and onion.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes after boiling, stirring occasionally to ensure even cooking.

  3. Drain the crawfish and let them cool.

  4. If desired, leave them to cool in the cooking liquid for more flavor.

Pick the meat

  1. Once cool, remove the flesh from the tails and discard the black thread or intestine.

  2. Pick the flesh from any claws that are large enough.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crawfish
Provides the main protein and the sweet, shellfish flavor that defines the bisque.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the cooking liquid, building a savory base flavor.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green aroma to the seasoned cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking for 20 minutes after boiling. Overcooking toughens crawfish meat, while stirring helps the crawfish cook evenly in the small volume of liquid, so timing and stirring matter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley. 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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