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Craw-fish

A broth of crawfish simmered with carrots, onion, herbs, and vinegar.

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.

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

Make the broth

  1. Simmer the mixture for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the broth through a sieve.

  3. Add the live crawfish to the broth and stir continuously for 20 minutes until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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
Release sweetness and body into the broth as they simmer.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aromatic sweetness to the broth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the broth and helps draw flavour from the vegetables.
Live crawfish
Provide the main seafood flavour and protein of the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the live crawfish and stirring for 20 minutes. Crawfish cook in the hot broth, and the shells and flesh need enough time to become fully cooked. Stirring keeps the heat even so no part stays underdone or overcooks in one spot.

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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