Name: Soft Shell Crabs
Ingredients: soft shell crabs; 1 beaten egg; seasoned bread crumbs; coarse sea salt; cayenne pepper; oil or lard for frying; sauce tartare; parsley for garnish; lemon, cut into quarters for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Soft Shell Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Lift the shell and remove the spongy substance on both sides.
Use your thumb nail to pull off the small, loose shell called the 'apron'.
Wipe the crabs dry; wash them if sandy.
Dip the crabs in the beaten egg, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.
Fry in smoking hot oil or lard for ten minutes.
Drain on soft brown paper.
Place sauce tartare in the center of a cold, flat dish, arrange the crabs around it, and garnish with parsley and lemon quarters.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).