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Crabs Farcies

Stuffed crab with bread crumbs, butter, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crabs Farcies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all the meat from the boiled crab and chop it into very small pieces.

  2. Mix the crab meat with slightly more than ¼ cup of bread crumbs, seasoning with pepper, salt, and butter.

Stuff and bake

  1. Return the mixture to the crab shell and squeeze lemon juice over it.

  2. Top with a thick layer of bread crumbs and place small bits of butter on top.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the crumbs are browned.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin garnished with lemon and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 body and flavor of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Bind the filling and absorb moisture, giving it a light, set texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are browned. Baking at the stated temperature dries the surface and browns the crumbs and butter through the Maillard reaction. Underbaking leaves the topping pale and the filling soft. Overbaking dries the crab meat and makes it tough.

“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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