Name: Stewed Land Crabs
Ingredients: land crabs; cayenne pepper; Indian kale; chili pods; maize flour or rice

Why it works: Kale and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 147 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Land Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the flesh from the shells of the land crabs.
Stew the crab meat with plenty of cayenne pepper.
Serve the stew in the crab shells.
For a variation, stew the black crabs with Indian kale and chili pods.
Serve with a pudding made of maize flour or rice.

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.

Kale + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together147 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + kaletop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together492 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + flourtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together384 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).