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Cray-fish or Prawn Soup

A fish soup made with whitings, eel, crayfish or prawns, and aromatic spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Cray-fish or Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish base

  1. Boil the whitings and eel in enough water to cover them.

  2. Skim the surface clean.

  3. Add whole pepper, mace, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme, and cloves.

  4. Boil until the mixture becomes a mash.

Make the shell broth

  1. Pick the cray-fish or prawns.

  2. Pound the shells.

  3. Boil the shells with a little water, vinegar, salt, and herbs.

  4. Strain this liquid over the shells in a sieve.

  5. Pour the clear soup over the sediment.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ginger + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whitings
Their flesh breaks down into the mash that gives the soup its body.
Eel
Adds richness and body to the fish base as it cooks down.
Cray-fish or prawns
Their shells give the broth its characteristic shellfish flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the fish base.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the surface clean. Foam and fine impurities rising during the first boil can cloud the soup and give it a scummy taste, so removing them early keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, pepper, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Fennelfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, pepper, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme. 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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