Name: Soft Crabs
Ingredients: soft crabs; lard or butter; coarse sea salt; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Crab and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Soft Crabs

Ingredients

soft crabs
lard or butter
coarse sea salt
parsley for garnish

Directions

Do not keep the crabs overnight; they will harden.
Remove the spongy substance and sand-bags from the crabs.
Wash the crabs well and wipe them dry.
Heat a pan with hot lard or butter.
Fry the crabs until they are a fine brown.
Add a little coarse sea salt to the lard if using lard.
Serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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.

Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).