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Soup

Craw-fish or Prawn Soup

A soup made from whiting and eel stock, with crayfish or prawns, lobster, beef gravy, flour and butter.

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

Make the fish base

  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, then boil until it becomes a mash.

  3. Pick the craw-fish or prawns, pound the shells, and boil them with water, vinegar, salt, and herbs.

  4. Strain the liquid over the shells and set aside.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Chop the lobster and add it to the soup along with beef gravy, craw-fish or prawn tails, flour, and butter.

  2. 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
Break down into a mash that gives the soup its body and flavour.
Eel
Adds richness and body to the fish base as it cooks down.
Craw-fish or prawns
Shells boiled into the liquid give the soup its shellfish aroma and flavour.
Lobster
Adds sweet shellfish flavour and meat to the finished soup.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter with the gravy. Flour thickens liquid only when it is dispersed well and cooked, so adding it lumpy or without enough stirring can leave clumps and a raw floury taste.

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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