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Salad

Crab Salad

A salad made with crab meat, hard‑boiled eggs, celery, lettuce, and dressing, served on lettuce leaves and garnished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the picked crab meat, chopped hard-boiled eggs, sliced celery, and tender lettuce.

  2. Mix in the cooked salad dressing until well combined.

  3. Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves and garnish with a piece of lemon.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

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

  5. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 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
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavor that the salad is built around.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture that binds the salad together.
Cooked salad dressing
Adds moisture and tang, coating the other ingredients and tying the flavors together.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft crab and egg.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, crab, egg, celery, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, egg, celery, lettuce. 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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