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Craw-fish Soup

A soup made with crawfish, onions, carrots, parsley, peppercorns, and bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Craw-fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the cold water in a pot, and skim the surface when it begins to boil.

  2. Add the chopped onions, carrots, parsley, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

  3. Pound the crawfish shells and small claws, then boil them with the broth for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the broth and add crusts of bread to thicken.

Finish and serve

  1. If available, pound the lobster spawn and add it to the soup.

  2. Let the soup simmer gently for 2 minutes.

  3. Add the crawfish to heat through, and the soup is ready to serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crawfish (in the method)
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup as it is cooked in the broth.
Bread crusts
Absorb liquid and thicken the strained broth, giving the soup more body.
Onions
Release sweetness and aromatic flavour into the broth as they cook.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and body to the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Skim the surface when the water begins to boil. Foam and impurities rise as the water heats. Removing them early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, fish, bread, lobster):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, fish, bread, lobster. 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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