Name: Crab Soup
Ingredients: crab meat; ½ cup cooked rice; stock or boiling water; lobster butter (optional)

Why it works: Crab and lobster work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 196 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

crab meat
½ cup cooked rice
stock or boiling water
lobster butter (optional)

Directions

Remove all the meat from the crab.
Mix the crab meat with the cooked rice.
Pound the mixture well and add stock or boiling water until it reaches a thick cream consistency.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.
Heat the soup without boiling it.
Add boiled cream and a spoonful of lobster butter to the soup before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Crab + lobstertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together196 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).