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Cray Fish Soup

A soup made from crayfish meat and white stock, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Crayfish and lobster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Cray Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Remove the tails and meat from the heads and shells of the crayfish.

  2. Beat the crayfish meat to a paste in a mortar until it reaches a creamy consistency.

Make the soup

  1. Add the crayfish paste to the white stock and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a coarse cloth or tammy.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  4. For color, mix in lobster spawn or beetroot juice if desired.

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. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Pepper + beetroottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,682 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + beetroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Crayfish + beetroottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Crayfish + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup through its meat and paste.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the crayfish flavor.
Lobster spawn
Adds a reddish color to the soup when used.
Beetroot juice
Adds a reddish color to the soup as an alternative to lobster spawn.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a coarse cloth or tammy. Pressing the boiled mixture through a fine-meshed cloth or sieve removes fibres and small solids, giving the soup a smooth, even texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the beetroot

The recipe marks beetroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, pepper, lobster):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, pepper, lobster. 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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