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Dessert

Siberian Crab Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from boiled crabs, syrup, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Siberian Crab Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crabs

  1. Boil the crabs in enough water to cover them for 2 hours.

  2. Place the crabs in a jelly bag and allow them to drain without squeezing.

  3. Use the reddest crabs for a beautiful color in the jelly.

Make the jelly

  1. In a pot, combine 4 pints of syrup with 1 pound of loaf sugar and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

  3. Crab + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Their cooked juice forms the base of the jelly, and the reddest ones add color.
Syrup
Provides sweetness and liquid body to the finished jelly.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled, helps the jelly thicken and set.

The step that matters

Drain the crabs without squeezing. Squeezing the jpress bag pushes fine solids through the cloth, which clouds the juice and makes the finished jelly cloudy rather than 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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