Name: Crayfish ‘à LA Marinière’
Ingredients: a few dozen crayfish; 1 cup white wine; 1 onion; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ cup bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; a pinch of cayenne; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crayfish ‘à LA Marinière’

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

Boil the crayfish in white wine, then drain and reserve the liquid.
Pass the reserved liquid through a linen cloth to clear it.

Make the sauce

Chop the onion and fry it in butter without browning.
Moisten the onion with the crayfish liquor and add a little wine; boil for a few minutes.
Thicken the sauce with butter kneaded with bread crumbs and chopped parsley.
Finish the sauce with cayenne and lemon juice.

Serve

Dish up the crayfish and pour the sauce over them.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish: Provide the main protein and flavour, cooked briefly in wine to be served in the sauce.
White wine: Cooks the crayfish and adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquor that becomes the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and with bread crumbs helps thicken the sauce.
Bread crumbs: Kneaded into butter to thicken the sauce, giving it body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the onion in butter without browning. Browned onion gives a darker colour and stronger, bitter flavour that overpowers the delicate crayfish. Gentle frying softens the onion and keeps the sauce pale and sweet.

Swap the onion

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

Shallotfits better
Asparagusfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crayfish, white wine, butter, bread, parsley, lemon. 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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Crayfish ‘à LA Marinière’