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Stuffed Crabs

A dish of crab meat mixed with onion, parsley, red pepper, eggs, and Worcestershire sauce, stuffed into boiled crab shells and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stuffed Crabs

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. Boil the crabs and remove the meat.

  2. Chop the crab meat with onion, parsley, red pepper, and salt.

  3. In a frying pan, heat butter and lard until very hot.

  4. Add the mixture and cook until the onion is soft.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly.

  6. Remove from heat and add Worcestershire sauce.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crab shells with the mixture.

  2. Top each with a lump of butter and sprinkle with toast crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 its flavor.
Eggs
Bind the filling as they set with heat, holding it together in the shells.
Toast crumbs
Add dry body to the filling and form a crisp, browned topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs off the heat. Eggs set when heated, so stirring them into a very hot mixture can scramble them unevenly. Removing the pan from heat first lets the eggs bind the filling smoothly instead of cooking into lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, parsley, pepper, butter, egg, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, parsley, pepper, butter, egg, sauce. 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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