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Crabs a LA Chesapeake

Ensure crabs are alive before cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crabs a LA Chesapeake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place live crabs in a pot with boiling water and vinegar.

  2. Steam the crabs until fully cooked.

  3. Remove the meat from the crabs, discarding the 'dead men's fingers' and sponge part.

  4. Prepare a rich cream dressing, omitting eggs, and mix in the crab meat.

  5. Heat the mixture thoroughly and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Crab + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Vinegar + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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