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Crayfish-soup, with Rice

A soup of crayfish, rice, wine, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Crayfish-soup, with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Boil the crayfish with wine, parsley, spices, and aromatics for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the crayfish and remove all the meat.

  3. Pound one-third of the meat with some of the thin shell and large claws until it forms a paste.

Make the soup

  1. Mix in the boiled rice.

  2. Dilute with the crayfish cooking stock and fish broth.

  3. Add the tomato puree.

  4. Pass the liquid through a sieve.

  5. Heat the soup in a stewpan.

  6. Add pepper.

  7. Add butter.

  8. Stir without boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen.

  2. Add the preserved crayfish tails cut into pieces.

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

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

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main flavour and meat that gives the soup its body and taste.
Boiled rice
Thickens the soup and adds body as it breaks down into the liquid.
Tomato puree
Adds acidity, colour and a deeper savoury flavour to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma while the crayfish cook.

The step that matters

Stir without boiling. Once the butter is added, boiling can cause the fat to separate and make the soup look greasy and broken. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth and the flavour fresh.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, white wine, parsley, rice, pepper, 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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