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Dressed Crab

A crab prepared with melted butter, breadcrumbs, mustard, vinegar, and seasonings, then served in its shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Dressed Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Soak the crab in cold water for 20 minutes until froth appears.

  2. Boil the crab in fast-boiling salted water for about 20 minutes, depending on size.

  3. Once cooked, let the crab cool.

Pick the meat

  1. Remove the small claws and set aside for garnish.

  2. Break off the large claws and extract the flesh.

  3. Remove the apron and break it up, discarding the grey spongy feelers.

  4. Combine the soft flesh with the white flesh from the claws.

Dress and serve

  1. Add melted butter or salad oil, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar to taste, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Polish the shell with a little salad oil and refill it with the mixture.

  3. Garnish with the claws and serve on fresh salad.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 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
Provides the main meat that forms the body of the dish.
Melted butter or salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the crab meat rich and smooth.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture a softer, binding body.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that cuts through the richness of the crab and fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the crab meat.

The step that matters

Boiling the crab. Boiling for too long toughens crab meat and makes it dry, while too short a time leaves it underdone. Timing should follow the crab's size, since larger crabs need longer to cook through evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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