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Deviled Crabs

Deviled crabs are crab meat mixed with butter, flour, milk, spices, eggs, and mustard, then baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Deviled Crabs

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.

Make the filling

  1. Open the can of crabs and drain the water into a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling milk and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and salt, then remove from heat.

  5. Add the crab meat, mustard, lemon juice, mashed yolks, chopped whites of the hard-boiled eggs, and beaten raw egg, then mix thoroughly.

  6. Fill the crab shells with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the tops with the yolk of the egg.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  3. Pour a tablespoon of milk or cream over each.

  4. Brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C) and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provides the main body and flavor of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and keeps the filling moist.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set when baked, giving it a firmer texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy filling.
Mustard
Adds a sharp flavor that cuts through the richness of the butter and cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. The butter and flour mixture must be added to the boiling milk and cooked briefly so the starch thickens fully and loses its raw floury taste. Stirring it in well helps prevent lumps.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, milk, pepper, lemon, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, milk, pepper, lemon, egg. 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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