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Crayfish Soup

A savory soup made from crayfish meat, shells, butter, anchovies, fish stock, and French roll crumbs.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Remove the meat from the crayfish and set it aside on a plate.

  2. Pound the shells with butter and anchovies in a mortar.

  3. Combine the pounded mixture with fish stock in a stewpan and boil for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the stewpan.

Make the soup

  1. Add 3 pints of stock and the crumb of the French rolls, then bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and strain through a tammy.

  3. Add pounded lobster spawn to the soup and keep it warm without boiling.

  4. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

  5. Add the crayfish meat to the finished soup.

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. Fish + lobstertop 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

Butter
Enriches the pounded shells, carrying their flavour and giving the soup richness.
Anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth that rounds out the shellfish flavour.
French roll crumb
Thickens the soup slightly and adds body through its starch.
Pounded lobster spawn
Colours and enriches the soup, adding a rich, concentrated seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the soup warm without boiling. Once the lobster spawn is added, boiling can cause the delicate egg mixture to curdle or lose its smooth texture and colour.

“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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