Why it works: Crab and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓
Siberian Crab Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crabs
Boil a peck of crabs in enough water to cover them for two hours.
Place the crabs in a jelly bag and allow to drain without squeezing.
Make the jelly
Add 1 pound of loaf sugar to each pint of syrup.
Boil for 30 minutes.
Select the reddest crabs for a beautiful jelly color.
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.
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Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together407 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Crabs
- Give the liquid its flavor and the reddish colour of the finished jelly.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps it set into a firm jelly.
The step that matters
Drain without squeezing. Squeezing the jelly bag pushes fine solids through the strainer, which makes the syrup cloudy. Letting it drip on its own keeps the finished jelly clear.
“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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