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Crab Croquettes

A fried dish of seasoned crab meat mixed with eggs, milk, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Crab Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick the meat from the boiled crabs and chop it finely.

  2. Season the crab meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, and melted butter.

  3. Moisten the mixture with rich milk or cream, then add enough bread or cracker crumbs to stiffen it slightly.

  4. Add 2-3 well-beaten eggs to bind the mixture together.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes, then coat them in egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes delicately in boiling lard, preferably using a wire frying basket.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat of boiled crabs
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Rich milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorbs liquid and stiffens the filling so the croquettes hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set during cooking to hold the croquettes intact.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes delicately in boiling lard. The egg and crumb coating must set quickly in hot fat to seal the filling. If the fat is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and may fall apart; if too hot, the coating browns before the centre heats through.

“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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