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Scalloped Crabs with Mushrooms

A baked crab dish with mushrooms, butter, milk, and egg yolks, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Scalloped Crabs with Mushrooms

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

  1. Cut crabs and mushrooms into equal-sized pieces.

Make the filling

  1. Heat butter and onion juice in a frying pan, then stir in flour to form a roux.

  2. Remove from heat and mix in hot milk.

  3. Season with salt and red pepper, then add powdered egg yolks and crab meat.

  4. Stir in mushrooms and fill crab shells with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Top with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the dish its seafood flavor.
Milk
Makes a creamy sauce with the flour that binds the filling and keeps it moist.
Flour
Thickens the butter and onion mixture into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Powdered egg yolks
Enriches the filling and helps it set and hold together when baked.
Mushrooms
Add moisture, earthy flavor and soft texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumb topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring in the hot milk off the heat. Adding milk to a roux off the heat, gradually, helps prevent lumps, because the starch needs to disperse evenly before thickening.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, butter, flour, milk, pepper, 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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