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A Nice Way to Serve Crabs

A dish of boiled crabs mixed with bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings, shaped and fried into patties.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

A Nice Way to Serve Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab mixture

  1. Boil the crabs for 5 minutes.

  2. Pick and chop the crabs.

  3. In a bowl, combine the crabs with bread crumbs, butter, salt, black pepper, onion, parsley, thyme, and egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into mutton chop forms and roll in beaten egg.

  2. Insert a claw into each shape.

  3. Heat lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  4. Fry the crab shapes for 3 minutes until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve on a round dish with claws in the center.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main protein and flavor, forming the body of the cake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, beaten, forms a coating that helps the cakes brown.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the crab mixture.
Lard
Conducts heat in the frying pan and gives the cakes a browned, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Frying the crab shapes. Lard must be hot before the shapes go in; if the pan is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and cakes turn greasy and fall apart. Frying for the stated 3 minutes until browned gives a crisp outer layer that holds the delicate crab mixture together.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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