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Crab, Minced

A savory minced crab mixture flavored with anchovy, vinegar, sherry, and spices, served hot and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Crab, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the crab, discarding the unwholesome part near the head.

  2. Chop the crab meat and anchovy together.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crab mixture, salt, cayenne, vinegar, sherry, butter, and bread crumbs.

  2. Simmer gently for a few minutes.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

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. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 mixture and provides the dish's core flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they set gently with heat, giving it a creamy texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture into a soft, spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, rounding out the sharp vinegar and sherry.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so adding them off the heat and stirring gradually keeps them smooth and creamy instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits less well
  4. Almondfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, anchovy, pepper, vinegar, sherry, butter. 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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