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Cray-fish Stew

A stew of crayfish cooked with onion, paprika, green pepper, and crab juice, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cray-fish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Scrub the crayfish well with a small brush.

  2. Clean, wash, and cook the crayfish in salted water with parsley until they turn red.

Make the stew

  1. In a separate pan, combine grated onion, paprika, sliced green pepper, and a little flour.

  2. Add 16 crab juice and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the meat from the crayfish shells and add it to the pan.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt to taste and steam for 5 to 6 minutes.

  5. Serve the stew with cooked rice.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Crayfish + crabtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main protein and the sweet, briny meat that forms the body of the stew.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour as it softens into the base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew has body rather than being watery.
Crab juice
Supplies the liquid and concentrated seafood flavour that forms the stew broth.
Green pepper
Contributes a fresh, slightly bitter vegetal note and some texture.

The step that matters

Remove the meat from the crayfish shells and add it to the pan. Crayfish meat cooks quickly and turns tough and rubbery if overcooked, so it should be added to the hot base only to warm through during the final steaming.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crayfish, pepper, parsley, flour, crab, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, pepper, parsley, flour, crab, rice. 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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