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Deviled Crabs

A baked crab dish with crab meat, breadcrumbs, lemon, mustard, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

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 filling

  1. Remove the meat from the shells of cold boiled crabs and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the crab meat with bread crumbs, lemon juice, lemon peel, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, and curry powder.

  3. Melt butter in a saucepan, add the crab mixture, and toss until very hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill individual crab shells with the mixture, add tiny bits of butter on top, and sprinkle with crumbs.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  3. Serve with very thin slices of lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Crab + buttertop 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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the dish its flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the crab.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Baking too long dries out the crab meat and toughens it, while too short a bake leaves the filling cold in the centre and the top pale. Watch for a light golden top rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, bread, mustard, pepper, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, bread, mustard, pepper, butter. 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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