Skip to main content
Main

Browned 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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Browned Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the inside of the crab shell.

Make the filling

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

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

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crab shell with the mixture.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and bake 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 core flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps the crumbs brown.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together in the shell rather than running out.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven and adds a crisp texture.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and broth or gravy. Flour thickens the liquid through starch gelatinization, so the filling should be stirred well and the broth added gradually to avoid lumps and an overly thin or pasty mixture.

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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes