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Stuffed Crabs

A dish of boiled crab meat stuffed into shells, seasoned with herbs, onion, and spices, topped with tomato and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Stuffed Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the crabs for a few minutes, then crack and pick out all the meat.

  2. In a skillet, lightly fry the onion in 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. In a bowl, mix the crab meat, grated crackers, fried onion, thyme, parsley, black pepper, cayenne, and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Add the egg and lemon juice, then mix again.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shells with the mixture and top with chopped tomato.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with remaining butter.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + breadtop 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 meat that forms the body of the dish.
Hard boiled eggs
Yolks bind the filling and add richness and a creamy texture.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds together when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden crust on top and absorb moisture from the filling.
Grated crackers
Add body to the filling and absorb moisture from the crab.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough sets the egg binder and browns the crumb topping, while overbaking can dry the crab meat and make the filling tough.

Swap the onion

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

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

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