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Soup

Craw-fish or Prawn Soup

A fish soup made with whitings, eel, crawfish or prawns, lobster, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Craw-fish or Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish broth

  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 it becomes a mash.

Make the shell stock

  1. Pick the crawfish or prawns.

  2. Pound the shells and boil them with a little water, vinegar, salt, and herbs.

  3. Strain the boiled shells over a sieve to collect the liquid, then combine it with the clear soup.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the chopped lobster, beef gravy, and the tails of the crawfish or prawns.

  2. Incorporate flour and butter, and season to taste.

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 broth, giving it body and a fish flavour.
Eel
Adds richness and gelatin to the fish broth as it cooks down.
Crawfish
Shells boiled into the liquid give the soup its shellfish aroma; tails add bite.
Lobster
Adds sweet shellfish flavour and tender pieces to the finished soup.
Beef gravy
Provides savoury depth and a rich, meaty body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is worked in with the butter.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the fish until it becomes a mash. Cooking the fish long enough to break down fully releases its gelatin and flavour into the broth. Stopping early leaves the stock thin and bland, while overcooking can make it cloudy.

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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