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Crawfish Bisque

A soup made from boiled crawfish, onion, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Crawfish Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the crawfish

  1. Boil the crawfish in a small amount of water with salt, pepper, parsley, and onion for 20 minutes.

  2. Stir occasionally to ensure even cooking.

  3. Drain and let the crawfish cool.

  4. If desired, leave them to cool in the cooking liquid for more flavor.

Prepare the meat and shells

  1. Remove the flesh from the tails and claws, discarding the black thread from the tails.

  2. Pound the shells and heads in a mortar with the butter until it forms a paste.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Crawfish
Provides the main protein and the sweet, briny flavor of the bisque.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when pounded with the shells to form a paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the shells and heads with butter. Shells must be broken down finely so the butter can extract their fat and aromatic compounds, which carry much of the bisque's flavor and color.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, butter. 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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