Name: Devilled Crab
Ingredients: 1 crab, back-shell reserved; 1 tablespoon rich cream; pulverized crackers; cream crackers for serving; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Crab and cream work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab by removing the meat and mixing it with pulverized crackers.
Moisten the cracker mixture with rich cream.
Fill the reserved back-shell of the crab with the mixture.
Serve on a large flat dish with cream crackers.
Garnish each heap with a sprig of parsley.

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.

Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,392 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).