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Hot Crab

A crab dish where boiled crab meat is mixed with nutmeg, salt, pepper, butter, bread crumbs, and vinegar, then stuffed back into shells and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crab and remove the meat from the shells.

  2. Mix the crab meat with nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Fill and brown

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the bread crumbs and vinegar.

  2. Combine all ingredients and place the mixture back in the crab shell.

  3. Brown the filled shell before a fire or with a salamander.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Crab
Provides the main protein and sweet, savory flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the filling brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and liquid to give the filling body and a soft texture.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter.

The step that matters

Browning the filled shell. The filling is already cooked, so browning is only for color and crispness. Browning comes from heat on the surface; too little heat leaves it pale and soft, while too much can dry or scorch the crumbs before the filling warms through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, butter, bread, vinegar. 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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