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Martha Washington Crab Soup

A crab soup made with crab meat, bacon, eggs, milk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 922 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Martha Washington Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the crab

  1. Boil the crabs in water until done.

  2. Remove the crab meat and chop it finely.

  3. Combine the crab meat with 2 quarts of water that has been used to boil 1 pound of bacon.

Make the egg and milk mixture

  1. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of heated rich milk.

Finish the soup

  1. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the crab soup, ensuring it does not boil.

  2. Cook the soup for a few minutes after mixing.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

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. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Crab + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together467 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Crab + milktop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main flavor and substance of the soup.
Bacon
Its cooking water adds savory, smoky flavor to the broth.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup as they gently set in the hot liquid.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, mellow body to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and milk mixture without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when they get too hot, leaving the soup grainy. Adding the mixture off the boil and keeping the soup below a boil lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

“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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