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Crab Salad

A salad of crab meat served with mixed greens, lettuce hearts, endive or watercress, dressed with mayonnaise or salad dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and endive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Crack the large claws of the crab and remove the white meat in large pieces.

  2. Place the contents of the crab shell in the center of a large dish.

  3. Top with the picked meat from the breast and then the claw pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Surround the crab meat with mixed salad greens, quartered lettuce hearts, and blanched endive or watercress.

  2. Drizzle a little mayonnaise or salad dressing over the salad.

  3. Garnish with the small claws and fresh parsley.

  4. Ensure the mixed salad is thoroughly dry before serving.

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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Endive + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together107 recipes

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

  4. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Crab + endivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 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
Provides the main meat, adding sweet, delicate flavor and a tender texture to the dish.
Mayonnaise or salad dressing
Adds moisture and richness, coating the greens and balancing the crab with fat and acidity.
Mixed salad greens
Forms the bed of leafy, crisp texture that the crab meat is arranged over.

The step that matters

Ensure the mixed salad is thoroughly dry before serving. Any water left on the greens dilutes the dressing and makes the leaves limp, so the dressing will pool instead of coating them evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, lettuce, endive. 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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