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Cray Fish Soup

A hearty soup made with crayfish, lobster, mutton, split peas, vegetables, and spices, served over a fried French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cray Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shellfish

  1. Boil the crayfish and lobster until cooked, then remove the meat and set aside.

  2. Pound the shells of the crayfish and lobster in a mortar until fine.

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the shells, water, mutton, split peas, turnip, carrot, onion, mace, cloves, anchovy, thyme, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew on low heat until the mutton and shells release their flavor, then strain the mixture.

  3. Add the chopped crayfish and lobster meat to the strained broth.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes, then stir in melted butter and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Fry the French roll until golden brown, place it in a serving dish, and pour the soup over it.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Releases rich meaty flavor into the broth as it stews.
Green split peas
Break down during stewing to thicken the broth and add body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred into the hot broth.
Crayfish
Provide sweet shellfish flavor from both meat and shells.
Lobster
Adds sweet shellfish flavor and meat to the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter after boiling. Butter added to a boiling broth can separate and turn greasy. Simmering gently after adding it keeps the fat emulsified and the soup smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, lobster, mutton, peas, turnip, carrot, onion):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, lobster, mutton, peas, turnip, carrot, onion. 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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