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Deviled Crabs

A dish of crab meat mixed with crab cream, eggs, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, baked in shells and served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick the meat from boiled crabs and cut it into fine bits.

  2. Mix the crab meat with the creamy white substance and green fat.

  3. Add bread crumbs, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and lemon juice.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and butter, then add enough cream, stock, or water to moisten.

Fill and bake

  1. Clean the crab shells and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and small bits of butter.

  3. Brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Serve very hot or perfectly cold, garnished with parsley and accompanied by cream crackers.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 flesh and sweet savory bulk of the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Bind the filling and add a soft, rich texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, then brown into a crisp top.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab flavor.

The step that matters

Moistening the filling. Add the cream, stock, or water gradually until the mixture is moist but still holds its shape. Too much liquid makes the filling loose and soggy, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly after baking.

“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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