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Devilled Crab

A crab dish with crab meat mixed with cream, vinegar, and spices, baked and topped with browned breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

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 filling

  1. Remove the meat from the crab, discarding the inedible parts near the head.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crab meat with cream, vinegar, bread crumbs, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  3. Fill the crab shell with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle browned bread crumbs on top and add small bits of butter.

  2. Heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven until warmed through.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with toast or brown bread and butter.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  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
Provides the main body of the dish, supplying the meat that forms the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft rather than dry.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich crab and cream.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorbs liquid and binds the filling so it holds together when baked.
Butter
Melts over the top, adding fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven until warmed through. The filling is already cooked, so the goal is only to heat it through. Overbaking dries the crab meat and cream and toughens the texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, cream, vinegar, bread, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, cream, vinegar, bread, nutmeg, 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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