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Crab Soup

A hearty soup made with crab meat, claws, stock, and herbs, thickened with butter, flour, and evaporated milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Crab Soup

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine crab meat, claws, mace, salt, white pepper, celery, parsley, carrot, onion, and stock in a stew-pan.

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes.

  3. Combine stale bread and stock in another saucepan and simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the crab mixture into the bread mixture and mix well.

  5. Rub through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Return to heat and mix in butter and flour paste.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Heat evaporated milk and water in a double boiler.

  4. Add the remaining crab meat, salt, and cayenne.

  5. Boil once.

  6. Serve immediately.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and the sweet, delicate body of the soup.
Stale bread
Thickens the stock and gives the soup a smooth, body-rich texture once sieved.
Butter and flour
Forms a roux-style paste that thickens the soup and adds richness.
Evaporated milk
Adds creaminess and body while keeping the soup smooth and rich.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste. Flour must be fully blended into the hot liquid and cooked for a few minutes; otherwise it stays raw-tasting and clumpy instead of smoothly thickening the soup.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, mace, celery, parsley, carrot, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, mace, celery, parsley, carrot, onion. 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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