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Deviled or Baked Crabs

A baked crab dish with minced crab meat, breadcrumbs, celery, garlic, onion, sage, spices, pepper, sea salt, topped with cracker crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Deviled or Baked Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the minced crabs, breadcrumbs, celery, garlic, onion, sage, and spices. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Fill and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into crab shells.

  2. Top with cracker crumbs and dot with butter.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Crabs
Provide the main protein and bulk of the filling, with flavor from their meat.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the minced crab so the filling holds together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness as it softens in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The filling is already cooked crab, so the bake mainly sets the mixture and browns the topping. Baking too long dries the crab and hardens the crumbs, while stopping too early leaves the topping pale and the filling loose.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, celery, garlic, onion, sage, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, celery, garlic, onion, sage, pepper, butter. 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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