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Deviled Crabs with Tomatoes

A baked crab dish seasoned with tomato puree, breadcrumbs, lemon, spices, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs with Tomatoes

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. Boil the crabs and chop the meat finely.

  2. For each pound of crab meat, mix in 1 tablespoon of breadcrumbs and ½ pint of tomato puree.

  3. Add the juice of 1 lemon, salt, black pepper, red pepper, and a pinch of mustard. Stir well.

  4. Mix in ⅓ cup of sherry.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill cleaned crab shells with the mixture and cover with breadcrumbs.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve on a platter garnished with lemon slices.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 seafood flavor and texture.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the filling so it holds together in the shells.
Tomato puree
Adds moisture, acidity, and color to the filling.
Sherry
Adds a sweet, aromatic depth that complements the crab and tomato.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes. Baking only briefly is enough to heat the filling and brown the breadcrumb topping. Overbaking dries out the crab meat and toughens its proteins, so watch the topping closely.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, lemon, pepper, mustard, sherry):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, lemon, pepper, mustard, sherry. 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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