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Salad

Georgetown Crab Salad

A chilled salad of crab meat dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional capers or olives, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Georgetown Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Separate the crab meat into small pieces, cutting if needed.

  2. In a bowl, mix salt, pepper, and oil. Gradually add vinegar and mix thoroughly.

Make the salad

  1. Pour the dressing over the crab meat and lift with a spoon and fork until evenly mixed.

  2. Let the salad stand until very cold.

Serve

  1. Serve on a bed of lettuce leaves and sprinkle with capers or olives.

  2. Add mayonnaise or sauce tartare as a garnish, omitting capers and olives if using sauce tartare.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 salad and provides its flavor and texture.
Oil
Carries the seasoning and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar and mix thoroughly. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own. Adding the vinegar slowly while mixing breaks it into fine droplets, so the dressing becomes an even emulsion that coats the crab rather than pooling.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, pepper, vinegar, lettuce, sauce. 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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