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Devilled Crab

Devilled Crab is a baked crab dish seasoned with mustard, pepper, salt, catsup, olive oil or butter, bread crumbs, milk, and butter lumps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the picked crab meat with mustard, pepper, coarse sea salt, and catsup.

  2. Add olive oil or butter to the mixture.

  3. Moisten the bread crumbs with milk and mix in lumps of butter.

  4. Combine a little milk with the crab mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shells or a baking pan with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Olive + breadtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and supplies its flavor.
Olive oil or butter
Adds fat, giving the filling richness and moisture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and fat, helping the filling hold together and stay moist.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and loosens the crab mixture.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that season the crab.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at 400°F browns the surface through dry heat while the moist filling cooks through. Pulling it too early leaves it pale and underdone, while overbaking dries the crab and bread crumbs.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, olive, bread, milk, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, olive, bread, milk, butter. 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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