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Scalloped Crabs— New Orleans

A baked crab dish with a creamy mushroom and bread sauce, topped with cracker crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Scalloped Crabs— New Orleans

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs in salted boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the crabs, open them, and pick out the meat.

  3. Chop the crab meat with one-third as much mushrooms and a slice of bread soaked in stock.

Make the filling

  1. In a frying pan, heat butter and grated onion to make a roux with flour.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in hot milk, seasoning with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and dry mustard.

  3. Add powdered yolks of hard-boiled eggs and a raw egg to the crab mixture, then stir in the mushrooms.

  4. Cook the mixture for 10–15 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shells with the mixture, top with cracker crumbs, dot with butter, and brown in a 400 °F (200 °C) oven.

  2. Squeeze lemon over the crabs 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. Bread + buttertop 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main meat that forms the body of the dish.
Egg yolks
Powdered yolks and the raw egg bind the mixture and help it set when baked.
Raw egg
Binds the filling so it holds together once cooked.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion roux that gives the milk sauce body.
Milk
Forms the creamy sauce base that moistens the crab filling.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the crab mixture. Eggs set when heated, so they should be stirred in gently and the mixture cooked before filling, otherwise the filling can curdle or turn grainy and fail to bind.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, mushroom, bread, butter, onion, flour, milk):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, mushroom, bread, butter, onion, flour, milk. 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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