Skip to main content
Main

Crayfish a LA Bordelaise

A dish of crayfish cooked in a sauce of mirepoix, Bordeaux wine, cognac, Madeira, and velouté.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Crayfish a LA Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Soak the crayfish in a pan with water and milk for 2 hours.

  2. Drain the crayfish on a strainer.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine the mirepoix of vegetables, Bordeaux wine, parsley, ham, cognac, Madeira, and salt.

  2. Cover and boil for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Add the crayfish and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid through a sieve and reduce it by half.

  5. Gradually stir in the velouté sauce.

  6. Strain the sauce through a cloth into another pan.

  7. Stir in the butter, then add the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Remove the small claws and arrange them in the center of a dish with the bodies around, garnishing with parsley sprigs.

  2. Serve the sauce separately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Crayfish + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the meat served in the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the finished sauce.
Velouté sauce
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Bordeaux wine
Adds acidity and depth to the broth that flavours the crayfish.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the strained cooking liquid by half. Reduction concentrates the flavour of the wine, spirits and vegetables. Reducing too little leaves the sauce thin and weak; reducing too far can make it salty and overly intense once the velouté is added.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, milk, wine, ham, sauce, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, milk, wine, ham, sauce, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes