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Crab Soup

A crab soup made with boiled crab, milk, fish stock, rice, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice carefully and soak it in 2 cups of fish stock for a few hours.

  2. In a pot, combine the soaked rice, milk, and a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the butter and boil until the rice is perfectly soft.

  4. For added flavor, you may boil a small piece of stick cinnamon with the rice.

Make the soup

  1. Mix in the yellow meat from the crab and the fish stock, then rub through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the mixture to the pot, add the essence of anchovies or shrimps, and adjust seasoning.

  3. Stir until it boils, then add the claw meat from the crab and heat through without boiling again.

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.

  1. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Crab + shrimptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together123 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it cooks and thickens the soup, giving it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, mild sweetness to the soup.
Crab
Provides the main seafood flavor and texture from both the yellow and claw meat.
Fish stock
Supplies savory depth as the soup's main liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling again after adding the claw meat. Milk-based soups can curdle or separate when boiled hard, and delicate crab meat turns tough and stringy when overheated, so the final heating should be gentle.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, milk, fish, rice, butter, pepper, shrimp):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, milk, fish, rice, butter, pepper, shrimp. 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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