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Crab Croquettes

A fried or boiled dish of crab meat mixed with butter, cream, eggs, and spices, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Crab Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Carefully pick and chop the crab meat, discarding any fat.

  2. Season the crab meat with cayenne pepper and salt.

  3. In a bowl, mix the crab meat with butter, cream, and beaten eggs.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg.

  3. Coat each croquette with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Boil in hot oil using a wire frying basket to prevent breaking.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 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
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set when heated, holding the croquettes together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Rich cream
Adds moisture and softness to the filling, keeping it tender.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Boil in hot oil using a wire frying basket. The coating is fragile until it sets, so a wire basket supports the croquettes and stops them breaking apart in the hot oil.

“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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