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Potted Crabs

Crabs are soaked, boiled, dried, and seasoned with mustard, cayenne, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Crabs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crabs

  1. Plug up all holes in the crabs with wooden pegs.

  2. Soak the crabs in a tub of saltwater.

  3. Brush the crabs thoroughly.

  4. Wash the crabs in pure water.

  5. Boil the crabs.

  6. Remove the crabs from boiling water.

  7. Let the crabs cool.

  8. Pull off the claws.

Prepare the shells and claw meat

  1. Place the large shells in a slow oven to dry.

  2. Let the shells cool.

  3. Extract the meat from the claws.

  4. Remove any skins and strings from the claw meat.

  5. Cut the claw meat into dice.

  6. Pound the claw meat with clarified butter until it forms a plastic mass.

Season and pot

  1. Pick out the solid meat from the body shells, discarding skins and refuse.

  2. Beat the body meat with best Durham mustard, cayenne, chillie vinegar, and table salt.

  3. Place some of the seasoned body meat at the bottom of each pot.

  4. Mix the claw meat with the seasoning.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the meat that forms the body of the potted dish.
Clarified butter
Coats the claw meat and binds it into a smooth, spreadable mass with rich flavour.
Best durham mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the crab and butter.
Chillie vinegar
Adds acidity and heat that brighten the seasoned crab meat.

The step that matters

Pound the claw meat with clarified butter until it forms a plastic mass. Pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres while the butter coats them, so the mixture becomes smooth and spreadable. Stopping early leaves a grainy, crumbly texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, mustard, pepper, vinegar, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, mustard, pepper, vinegar, clove, nutmeg. 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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