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Deviled Crabs

A dish of boiled crab meat mixed with bread crumbs, eggs, lemon juice, and seasonings, stuffed back into shells and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the boiled crab and cut it into fine bits.

  2. Add one-third as much bread crumbs, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and lemon juice.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter or cream.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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 body and sweet, delicate flavor of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling a light, binding texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and help bind the filling together.
Butter or cream
Adds fat for moisture, richness and gentle browning on top.

The step that matters

Browning in the oven. Baking at 350°F until the top is golden dries the surface and develops flavor through browning, while the filling stays moist underneath. Watching for color prevents underbaking or drying out.

“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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