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Scalloped Crabs

A baked crab dish with seasoned crab meat, breadcrumbs, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Scalloped Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil crabs in a kettle of salted water for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Remove crabs from water and pick out the meat without breaking the shells.

Fill and bake

  1. Season the crab meat with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add bread crumbs, beaten eggs, and melted butter; mix well.

  3. Clean the shells and fill each with the crab mixture.

  4. Sprinkle additional bread crumbs on top and moisten with butter.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned on top.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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 of the filling and provides its savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the filling together and help it set when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the filling, and brown to form the crisp topping.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pick out the meat without breaking the shells. Shell fragments are hard to notice in the filling, and keeping the shells intact gives you sturdy vessels to fill and bake.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, pepper, bread, egg, 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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