Why it works: Crayfish and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓
Crayfish Butter
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the shells
Clean the crayfish shells well, removing skin and fiber.
Dry the shells in an oven at 300°F (150°C) until they can be ground to a fine powder.
Make the butter
Mix the powdered shells with the butter and hot water in a stewpan.
Squeeze the mixture through a fine sieve over a stewpan of boiling water.
Skim the butter into a basin of cold water to set.
Once cold, press the butter in a napkin.
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.
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Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together343 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Crayfish shells
- Provide the flavour and red colour that the butter takes on when the shells are infused.
- Fresh butter
- Carries the shell flavour and colour and sets firm again when chilled.
- Hot water
- Helps the powdered shells release their flavour and colour into the melted butter.
The step that matters
Squeezing the mixture through a fine sieve over boiling water. The butter must stay hot enough to pass through the sieve but not so hot that it splits or cooks the shell powder. Pressing firmly with the fine sieve keeps the fine solids out so the butter stays clear and 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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