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Bisque of Crayfish a L’ancienne

A bisque made with crayfish, vegetables, butter, wine, and consommé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bisque of Crayfish a L’ancienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gut from each crayfish by holding it firmly and pinching the end of the tail fin to withdraw the gut.

  2. Mince or dice the carrot, onion, celery, and parsley roots.

Make the bisque

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the minced vegetables with the bay leaf, thyme, and mignonette pepper for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the crayfish to the pan and pour in the bottle of French white wine.

  3. Allow the mixture to boil, then add the quart of strong consommé.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provide the main shellfish flavour and body of the bisque.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness as it fries the vegetables.
French white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the liquid as it boils.
Strong consommé
Forms the main savoury liquid that gives the bisque its body.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to boil, then add the quart of strong consommé. Boiling the wine with the crayfish drives off alcohol and concentrates flavour before the consommé is added, so the liquid reduces to a balanced, well-seasoned base rather than a harsh, thin one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, carrot, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter. 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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