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Crab, Supreme Of, with Tomatoes

Shredded crab meat mixed with bread crumbs, tomato sauce, lemon, and wine, simmered and served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crab, Supreme Of, with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the gills and shell from the crab, keeping only the meat.

Make the crab supreme

  1. Combine the crab meat with bread crumbs, tomato sauce, lemon juice, lemon peel, and lemon slices in a bowl.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper if desired.

  3. Add the wine and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  4. Bring to a boil, then transfer to a deep dish.

  5. Garnish with triangular pieces of dry toast and lemon slices.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 dish and gives it its seafood flavor.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture into a moist, spoonable texture.
Tomato sauce or tomato conserve
Adds moisture, acidity and tomato flavor to the crab mixture.
Chablis or dry sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid is reduced during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering with the wine. Stirring frequently during the 15-minute simmer prevents the bread crumbs and tomato solids from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would add a burnt flavor.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, bread, tomato, pepper, sherry):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, bread, tomato, pepper, sherry. 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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