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Crabs on Toast

A creamy crab mixture served on toasted bread slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crabs on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab filling

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the finely chopped celery and cook briefly.

  3. In a separate bowl, slightly thicken the cream or milk with the flour.

  4. Stir in the crab meat and cook until moisture evaporates.

  5. Add the sherry, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on thin slices of toasted bread.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cream + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the base for cooking the celery.
Cream or milk
Forms a light sauce that gives the crab filling a moist, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk so it clings to the crab meat.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and protein of the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the crab meat and cook until moisture evaporates. Crab releases water as it heats. Cooking it off keeps the filling from turning loose and soggy on the toast, so the thickened cream sauce can coat the meat properly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, flour, crab, meat, sherry, pepper. 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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