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Bisque of Crab a LA Fitziiardinge

A creamy crab bisque made with boiled crab, cooked rice, consommé, cream, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Crab and cream work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Bisque of Crab a LA Fitziiardinge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Pick the white meat from the claws into shreds and set aside.

  2. Scoop out the pulpy part of the crab and pound it with the white meat and cooked rice.

Make the bisque

  1. Dilute the mixture with the consommé and strain it through a fine sieve into a puree.

  2. Heat the puree gently in a soup pot, stirring with a wooden spoon to prevent curdling.

  3. Mix in the boiling cream and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen containing the warmed shredded crab meat and serve.

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. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main flavour and the meat that gives the soup its body.
Cooked rice
Pounded into the mixture to thicken the soup and give it a smoother texture.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base that thins the pounded mixture into a puree.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Heating the puree gently. Stirring gently over low heat keeps the egg-free puree from curdling or scorching, which would leave it grainy and spoil its smooth texture.

“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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