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Crab Creole

A stew of onions, peppers, tomato, and crab in butter, seasoned with salt and red pepper, thickened with flour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop onions and peppers very fine and place in a stew pan with butter, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Stew slowly for 10 minutes, then add the peeled tomato.

  3. Continue to stew until the tomato is dissolved.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix flour with cream and add to the pan, stirring until thickened like drawn butter.

  2. Fold in the finely-picked crab and serve on toast.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cream + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the onions and peppers as they stew.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that coats the crab.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, turning the flour into a silky, thickened sauce.
Crab
Provides the main seafood flavor and tender texture in the finished dish.
Tomato
Breaks down into the stew, adding acidity and body to the base.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and cream. If the flour is added directly to hot liquid without being mixed with cream first, it clumps and stays lumpy. Mixing it smoothly with cream first lets it thicken evenly as it heats.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pepper, flour, cream, crab):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pepper, flour, cream, crab. 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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