Skip to main content
Main

Crab Soup

A creamy soup made with crab meat, milk, spices, and thickened with butter and flour, finished with egg yolks and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Crab Soup

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Crab Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil 3 quarts of milk in a large pot.

  2. Add the crab meat, cayenne, nutmeg, and mace.

  3. Thicken the soup with a mixture of butter and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the crumbled egg yolks.

  2. Pour the soup into a tureen and sprinkle the lettuce on top.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavours.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and texture of the soup.
Butter and flour
Thicken the milk into a smooth, creamy body.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy, slightly grainy texture to the soup.
Lettuce heart
Adds fresh, crisp texture as a garnish on top.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and milk to avoid lumps and a raw starchy taste. Stirring as it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, meat, crab, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, meat, crab, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes