Name: Buttered Crabs
Ingredients: crab meat (from boiled crabs); ¼ cup gravy; ⅓ cup white wine; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; a few breadcrumbs; 2 tablespoons butter (rolled in flour); 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crabs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pick out the inside of the boiled crabs.

Make and serve

Beat the crab meat with gravy, white wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, breadcrumbs, butter, and vinegar or lemon juice.
Serve 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.

Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 dish and provides its savory flavor.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavor through the mixture.
Breadcrumbs: Absorb liquid and help give the mixture body and a soft texture.
White wine: Adds moisture and a light acidic brightness to the mixture.
Vinegar or lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the crab meat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, white wine, pepper, butter, flour, vinegar):

Tarragonfits better
Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, white wine, pepper, butter, flour, 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.