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Crab Cocktail

A chilled cucumber cup filled with seasoned crab mixture and topped with mayo and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,405 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Cocktail

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into slices two inches thick.

  2. Scoop out the centers to form cups.

Assemble and serve

  1. Blend crab meat with onion and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Fill the cucumber cups with the crab mixture.

  3. Top with the mayonnaise mixed with the tomato catsup.

  4. Serve very cold.

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. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the topping.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the mayonnaise topping.
Cucumbers
Form the cool, crisp cups that hold the filling.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, crab, meat, onion, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, crab, meat, onion, tomato. 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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