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Cullis of Crayfish

A stew of crayfish, veal, ham, onion, stock, cloves, basil, mushrooms, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,294 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Cullis of Crayfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Boil the crayfish with salt, pepper, and sliced onion.

  2. Remove the crayfish tails and pound the rest in a mortar until fine.

Make the stew

  1. In a pot, simmer veal, ham, and quartered onion gently. If it sticks, add a little flour.

  2. Moisten with stock and add cloves, sweet basil, mushrooms, and sliced lemon.

  3. Skim off the fat and remove the meat with a skimmer.

  4. Thicken the sauce with essence of ham, then add the crayfish and strain.

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 + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main flavor and body of the stew.
Veal
Adds meaty richness to the stock as it simmers.
Ham
Adds savory depth to the stock and sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and savory depth to the stew.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the other flavors.

The step that matters

Simmer the veal, ham, and onion gently. If the heat is too high, the meat and onion can scorch and stick to the pot, giving a burnt taste. Gentle heat draws out flavor while keeping the base clean; a little flour helps if sticking starts.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, pepper, veal, ham, clove, basil, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, pepper, veal, ham, clove, basil, mushroom. 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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