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Crab Croquettes

Crab croquettes are small shaped crab meat balls coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Crab Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine crab meat, salt, parsley, and salad dressing.

  2. Mix well with your hands and shape into balls, cakes, or cork shapes.

Coat

  1. Dip each shape into slightly thinned salad dressing, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  2. Dip again in the dressing and roll again in the crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in a liberal quantity of very hot lard until golden brown.

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 + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  2. Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Salad dressing
Binds the crab meat and adds moisture and tang to the mixture.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the coating and crisping the outside.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb excess fat and turn greasy before the coating browns. Hot fat sets the crumb crust quickly, keeping the inside moist and the outside crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat. 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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