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Crayfish Soup

A soup made from crayfish, butter, anchovies, a French roll crumb, lobster spawn, seasoning, and fish stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crayfish and lobster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Crayfish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the shell base

  1. Shell the crayfish and pound the shells with the butter and anchovies in a mortar.

  2. Add 1 pint of stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain through a fine sieve and combine with the remaining stock and the crumb of the roll.

  2. Bring to a boil and rub through a tumbler with the lobster spawn.

  3. Add the fish but do not let the soup boil after straining.

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. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Crayfish + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Lobster + fishtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together326 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

Crayfish shells
Release their flavour into the stock as they simmer and are pounded with butter.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the pounded shells and adds richness and fat to the soup.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the shellfish flavour.
French roll crumb
Thickens the soup slightly and gives it body.
Lobster spawn
Colours the soup and adds a rich, concentrated seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Do not let the soup boil after straining. Once the fish is added, boiling toughens its proteins and makes it dry and stringy, and can curdle the enriched broth. Keeping it at a gentle heat keeps the fish tender.

“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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