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Fricassee of Crab

A creamy crab fricassee made with egg yolks, butter, flour, milk, sherry, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a powder.

  2. Work in the butter, flour, and French mustard.

  3. Add salt, red pepper, and mace.

  4. Heat the milk to a boil, then remove from heat.

  5. Gradually stir the hot milk into the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in the crab meat and cover.

  2. Set over boiling water for 5 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add the sherry and pour over the lemon slices in a deep dish.

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

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + crabtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Pounded yolks thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and tender texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the hot milk into the egg mixture. Adding hot milk slowly lets the yolks and butter blend smoothly without scrambling. Pouring it in all at once can cook the yolks into lumps and leave the sauce grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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