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Crab, Hot or Buttered

A stuffed crab filled with seasoned breadcrumbs, baked or broiled, served hot with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Crab, Hot or Buttered

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shell.

  2. Mix the crab meat with salt, pepper, nutmeg, bread crumbs, salad oil or cream, and vinegar.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the crab shell with the mixture and sprinkle extra bread crumbs on top.

  2. Heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven or under the broiler until hot.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and serve with toasted bread.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 body and flavour of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the filling a soft, moist texture.
Salad oil or heavy cream
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the filling tender rather than dry.
Vinegar
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the rich crab flavour.

The step that matters

Heating until hot. Crab meat is already cooked, so the goal is only to heat it through. Overheating or over-broiling can toughen the meat and dry the filling, while the crumb topping may brown too quickly under the broiler.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, crab, pepper, nutmeg, bread, cream, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, pepper, nutmeg, bread, cream, 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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