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Brownsd Crab

A crab stuffed with a mixture of crab meat, onion, parsley, mushrooms, truffles, and butter, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Brownsd Crab

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. Butter the inside of the crab shell.

  2. Mince the crab meat and mix it with the fried onion, parsley, mushrooms, truffles, and butter.

  3. Add flour, salt, cayenne, and broth or gravy to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shell with the mixture.

  2. Top with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the filling brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together rather than running out of the shell.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they toast in the oven.
Broth or gravy
Adds moisture and savory depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until hot. Crab and the other filling ingredients are already cooked, so the goal is to heat them through and brown the crumbs. Overbaking dries the meat and makes the filling tough, so watch the topping colour and stop once the filling is hot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, parsley, mushroom, truffle, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, parsley, mushroom, truffle, flour, 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.

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