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Craw-fish

A broth of crawfish simmered with carrots, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, salt, pepper, vinegar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Craw-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the crawfish in several changes of water until clear.

Make the broth

  1. In a stewpan, combine carrots, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, salt, pepper, vinegar, and water.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the broth through a sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the live crawfish to the broth and stir continuously for 20 minutes.

  2. Keep the crawfish in the broth until 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften during simmering.
Onion
Builds savory depth and aroma in the broth as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the broth.
Live crawfish
Provide the main protein and flavor that the broth is built around.

The step that matters

Adding the live crawfish to the broth. Live crawfish must be cooked fully and promptly to be safe, and stirring them over a long period can toughen the meat and break them up. Keep the broth at a steady simmer so the shellfish cook evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, thyme, clove, pepper, vinegar. 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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