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Soup

Crayfish Soup

A soup made from boiled crayfish, butter, grated French roll, onion, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, salt, sherry, and water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Crayfish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Remove the shells from the crayfish.

  2. Clean the crayfish.

  3. Pound the crayfish until smooth, using a lobster shell if available.

  4. Set aside the tails of the crayfish.

  5. Pound the remainder of the crayfish.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the pounded crayfish, butter, grated French roll, onion with cloves, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt in the water or weak stock.

  2. Boil gently for 2 hours.

  3. Heat the pounded remainder in the soup.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

  5. Heat thoroughly.

  6. Add the tails and sherry.

  7. Serve with fried croutons after 6 minutes.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 body of the soup once pounded and sieved.
French roll
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a fuller, smoother texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pounding alone leaves shell and fibrous bits in the base. Pressing it through a sieve removes these fragments, giving the smooth texture the soup depends on.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, butter, clove, pepper, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, butter, clove, pepper, sherry. 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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