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Devilled Crab

A crab filled with a mixture of pulverized crackers and rich cream, served with cream crackers and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and cream work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Moisten pulverized crackers with rich cream.

  2. Fill the back-shell of the crab with the mixture.

Serve

  1. Arrange the shells on a large flat dish.

  2. Serve with cream crackers and garnish each heap with a sprig of parsley.

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 + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,392 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the filling's flavour and substance.
Rich cream
Moistens the crackers so the filling holds together and stays soft.
Pulverized crackers
Bind with the cream to form a absorbent, crumbly filling that holds its shape in the shell.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, cream. 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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