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Fricassee of Crabs

A creamy crab dish with egg yolk butter sauce, milk, sherry, and spices.

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 ↓

Fricassee of Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the egg yolks to a powder and mix with the butter, flour, mustard, salt, cayenne, and mace.

  2. Heat the milk to a boil, then remove from heat and gradually stir it into the paste.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the crab meat and cover the mixture.

  2. Place the covered dish in boiling water for 5 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add the sherry and serve over thin slices of lemon 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. 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. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with the milk.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy body.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and delicate texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the paste. Pouring the milk in gradually while stirring keeps the flour and egg yolks from clumping, giving a smooth sauce rather than lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Avocadofits about as well

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