Skip to main content
Main

Crab Flakes En Coquille

A baked crab dish with a buttery sauce, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Crab Flakes En Coquille

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.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion juice and flour, stirring for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the stock and lemon juice, cooking for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the milk and beaten egg yolk, then add the crab meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into shells, cover with breadcrumbs, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crumbs are 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 provides the dish's core flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the sauce, keeping the filling tender.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, helping it set gently when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps form the flour-based roux.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk to the hot sauce. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets very hot liquid directly. Stirring it in off the heat or after the sauce has cooled slightly helps keep the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes