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Cray Fish Soup

A soup made with crayfish, lobster, mutton, split peas, vegetables, spices, butter, served over a fried French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cray Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells and meat

  1. Boil the crayfish and lobster, then pick the meat clean.

  2. Pound the shells in a mortar until very fine.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the shells in water with mutton, split peas, turnip, carrot, onion, mace, cloves, anchovy, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew on low heat until the flavors are extracted.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the chopped crayfish and lobster meat.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes, then stir in melted butter and simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Fry the French roll until brown, place it in a dish, and pour the soup over it.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Gives the soup its characteristic shellfish flavor and tender meat pieces.
Mutton
Contributes rich meaty body and savoury depth to the broth as it simmers.
Green split peas
Break down during stewing to thicken the broth and add body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
French roll
Fried until brown, it soaks up the soup and gives a crisp-soft base.

The step that matters

Stew on low heat until the flavors are extracted. Gentle heat draws flavour and gelatin from shells and bones slowly, while a hard boil can make the broth cloudy and harsh.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, lobster, mutton, peas, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, lobster, mutton, peas, turnip, carrot, onion. 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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