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Devilled Crabs

Devilled Crabs are boiled crabs filled with a butter, bread, mustard, and parsley mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Crabs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the crabs

  1. Plunge the crabs headfirst into a large pot of well-salted boiling water and boil for 15 minutes until red.

  2. Remove the crabs and let them cool slightly, then take off the back shells and wash them thoroughly.

Make the filling

  1. Pick out all the meat and mix it in a saucepan with butter, soaked and wrung bread, mustard, salt, parsley, pepper, and cayenne until hot.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the shells with the mixture, dust with bread crumbs, dot with butter, and arrange on a pan.

  2. Brown quickly in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C). Serve on a napkin with parsley or lemon slices as garnish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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, giving the dish its flavour and substance.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps the topping brown.
Bread
Soaked and wrung, it binds the filling and keeps it moist.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts the richness of the crab and butter.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the hot oven.

The step that matters

Brown quickly in a hot oven. The filling is already hot and cooked, so the oven is only needed to brown the crumbs and butter. Overbaking dries the crab meat and toughens the bread, so watch closely and remove the shells once the topping is golden.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, bread, parsley, pepper. 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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