Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Crab

A baked crab dish with cream, tartare sauce, egg yolk, butter, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, topped with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the shells and claws of the crab.

  2. Clean the shell and butter the inside.

Make the filling

  1. Shred the crab meat finely and mix it with cream, tartare sauce, 1 tablespoon of breadcrumbs, the yolk of the hard-boiled egg (rubbed through a sieve), and melted butter.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and a pinch of cayenne.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the mixture back into the shell, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and small bits of butter.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Garnish with parsley and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and gives it its flaky, savoury texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture that helps bind the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the filling from drying out.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture to help bind the filling and form a crisp, browned topping.

The step that matters

Bake only until hot and browned. The crab and egg are already cooked, so baking mainly heats the filling and browns the crumbs. Baking longer dries the crab meat and can make the butter separate.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes