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Bisk of Fresh-water Crayfish

A bisque made with fresh-water crayfish, roasted chicken meat, French roll crumbs, broth, cream, and lobster spawn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bisk of Fresh-water Crayfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish and chicken

  1. Boil the crayfish without vinegar.

  2. Select 2½ dozen whole tails.

  3. Pound the remaining crayfish and chicken meat in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the crumb of the French rolls in broth, then add to the mortar with hard‑boiled egg yolks and pound together.

  2. Boil the shells of the crayfish in 1 pint of broth, then use the liquid to dilute the pounded mixture and strain it through a fine sieve.

  3. Boil 1½ pints of cream, stirring constantly to prevent scum, then pour into the soup mixture and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Pound the lobster spawn, dilute with broth, and mix into the soup. Keep hot without boiling.

Serve

  1. Soak slices of bread and place them at the bottom of a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread and top with reserved crayfish tails.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Crayfish + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

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

  4. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 the shellfish base of the bisque.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the soup.
French roll crumb
Thickens the mixture and gives the soup body as it is pounded smooth.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the pounded mixture into a smooth purée.
Chicken meat
Adds savoury depth and body to the pounded base.

The step that matters

Keep the soup hot without boiling after adding the lobster spawn. Once cream is in the soup, boiling can cause it to curdle or separate, and the delicate roe can be spoiled by strong heat, so gentle warming keeps the texture smooth.

“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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