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Potted Crabs

Crabs are prepared by soaking, boiling, drying shells, and mixing meat with clarified butter, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

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 all holes in the crabs with wooden pegs.

  2. Soak the crabs in a tub of saltwater.

  3. Brush and rinse the crabs in pure water.

  4. Boil the crabs until cooked.

  5. Let the crabs cool.

  6. Remove the claws from the crabs.

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

Pick the meat

  1. Extract meat from the claws.

  2. Remove skins and strings from the claw meat.

  3. Pound the claw meat with clarified butter until smooth.

  4. Pick meat from the body shells.

  5. Discard skins and refuse from the body shell meat.

Season and pot

  1. Mix the body shell meat with mustard, cayenne, chillie vinegar, and table salt.

  2. Layer some seasoned mixture at the bottom of each pot.

  3. Combine the remaining seasoning with the claw meat.

  4. Fill the pots with the mixture.

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 main meat that forms the body of the potted mixture.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture when pounded into the claw meat.
Best durham mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and meat.
Chillie vinegar
Adds acidity and heat that brighten the seasoned crab mixture.

The step that matters

Pound the claw meat with clarified butter until smooth. Pounding breaks the meat into fine fibres so it blends evenly with the butter, giving a smooth, spreadable texture rather than a grainy one.

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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