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Crab Sauce

A sauce made from crab meat, butter, breadcrumbs, vinegar, mace, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crab Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shells and cut it into small pieces.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crab meat with mace and seasoning.

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the mixture along with bread crumbs and vinegar.

  2. Combine everything and place it in the crab shell.

Brown and serve

  1. Brown the mixture before the fire or with a salamander.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main meat and flavour of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the flavour through the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the mixture so it holds together.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter.

The step that matters

Brown the mixture before the fire or with a salamander. Browning relies on high direct heat to form flavourful Maillard browning on the surface. Too little heat leaves the top pale and wet, while overcooking can dry the crab meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, butter, milk, bread, vinegar):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, butter, milk, bread, vinegar. 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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