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Crab a LA Creole

A crab dish simmered in a tomato and butter sauce with onions, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs in salted water until they turn red.

  2. Remove the crabs from the heat.

  3. Carefully pick out the crab meat.

  4. Set the crab meat aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, brown the onion in the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the hot water and tomatoes.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, sugar, and ketchup.

  5. Boil until thickened.

  6. Add the crab meat.

  7. Cook for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Line a platter with slices of toast.

  2. Pour the mixture over the toast.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + ketchuptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Live crabs
Provide the main protein, which is cooked by boiling until red and then picked for meat.
Fresh butter
Browns the onion and adds richness and flavour to the base sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the hot water and tomatoes.
Tomatoes
Provide the acidity, body and sweetness that form the base of the sauce.
Onion
Softens and browns in butter, adding savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. Flour needs to boil for the starch to swell and thicken the sauce; stopping early leaves it thin and raw-tasting.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sugar, flour, onion, ketchup, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, flour, onion, ketchup, 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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