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Devilled Crab

A crab mixture with breadcrumbs, egg yolks, lemon, mustard, cayenne, salt, and butter, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the crab meat, bread crumbs, chopped egg yolks, lemon juice, mustard, Cayenne pepper, salt, and drawn butter.

  2. Fill scallop shells or small patty pans with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sift additional bread crumbs over the top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until slightly browned.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Crab + buttertop 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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and supplies the dish's sweet, savory flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling so it holds together when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, while the topping crisps and browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter flavors.
Drawn butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, helping the filling stay tender.

The step that matters

Bake until slightly browned. Baking too long dries out the delicate crab and toughens the egg yolk, while too short a bake leaves the filling cold and the topping pale. Watch for a light golden color rather than a set time alone.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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