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Soup

Craw-fish or Prawn Soup

A fish soup made with whitings, eel, crawfish or prawns, lobster, and beef gravy, seasoned with pepper, mace, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme, cloves, vinegar, herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Craw-fish or Prawn Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish stock

  1. Boil the whitings and eel in enough water to cover them.

  2. Skim the water clean and add whole pepper, mace, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme, and cloves.

  3. Boil until it becomes a mash.

Make the shell liquor

  1. Pick the crawfish or prawns and pound the shells.

  2. Boil the shells with a little water, vinegar, salt, and herbs.

  3. Strain the liquid over the shells in a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Pour the clear soup from the fish over the strained liquid.

  2. Chop the lobster and add it to the soup with beef gravy.

  3. Add the tails of the crawfish or prawns, flour, and butter, and season to taste.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ginger + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitings
Their flesh breaks down during boiling to build the body and flavour of the fish stock.
Eel
Adds richness and body to the fish stock as it cooks down.
Crawfish or prawns
Shells boiled into a liquor give the soup its characteristic shellfish flavour and colour.
Lobster
Chopped pieces add sweet shellfish flavour and substance to the finished soup.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly, giving it a fuller texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until it becomes a mash. Boiling the fish long enough to break down fully releases gelatin and flavour into the stock. If it is under-cooked, the broth stays thin and weak; the clear soup must be strained carefully afterward to keep it clear.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, fish, pepper, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Fennelfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, fish, pepper, ginger, parsley, onion, thyme. 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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