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Craw-fish Soup

A soup made with crawfish, onions, carrots, parsley, pepper, and bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Craw-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the cold water in a pot.

  2. Skim the surface when it begins to boil.

  3. Add the chopped onions, carrots, parsley, and both types of pepper.

  4. Remove the small claws and shells from the craw-fish, then pound them finely.

  5. Add the pounded craw-fish to the broth and boil for about 1 hour.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain the soup and add crusts of bread to thicken.

  2. If available, add lobster spawn, pound it, and mix it into the soup.

  3. Let the soup simmer gently for a couple of minutes.

  4. Add the cleaned craw-fish to heat through 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.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Craw-fish
Provides the main shellfish flavor and body of the broth.
Bread crusts
Starch from the crusts thickens the strained broth as it absorbs liquid.
Onions
Build savory sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Strain the soup and add crusts of bread to thicken.. Bread crusts thicken the soup only as they soak up liquid and soften, so they need time to hydrate. Straining first removes the cooked solids so the thickened broth stays smooth and clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, pepper, fish, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, pepper, fish, bread. 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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