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Devilled Crabs

A baked crab dish with butter, onion, flour, mustard, stock, wine, beef extract, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devilled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and sauté the onion for three minutes.

  2. Stir in the flour mixed with mustard, then gradually add the white stock, Sherry wine, and beef extract.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the parsley, egg yolks, and crab meat, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the finely chopped mushroom caps and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Fill and bake

  1. Wash and trim the crab shells, then fill them generously with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle the tops with stale bread crumbs mixed with a small amount of melted butter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the crumbs are golden brown.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  3. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the dish's savoury seafood flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set into a creamy, cohesive texture when heated.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock base so the filling holds together rather than running.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the onion flavour, and browns the crumb topping.
White stock
Provides the liquid that turns the flour roux into a moist, savoury sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts the richness of the filling.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil before adding the egg yolks and crab meat. The sauce must be thickened by the flour before the yolks go in. Yolks added to a very hot sauce can scramble, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, bound filling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, crab, meat, mustard, sherry, wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, crab, meat, mustard, sherry, wine. 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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