Name: Soft-shell Crabs Fried
Ingredients: soft-shell crabs; fine dry bread crumbs or cracker dust; pepper; coarse sea salt; 2 eggs; smoking-hot fat for frying; lemon (for garnish)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Soft-shell Crabs Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the soft-shell crabs in cold water and lay them on their backs on a clean surface.
Select fat, plump, and alive crabs, handling them carefully to avoid breaking off the claws.
Use a small, sharp knife to cut a half-circle out of the body behind the eyes to remove the eyes and sand-bag.
Lift the apron near the back of the under shell and cut off the tuft or remove it entirely.
Press the back shell away from the body to remove the tough, fibrous fins and dry the crabs on a clean towel.
Prepare a platter of fine dry bread crumbs mixed with a little pepper and coarse sea salt.
Heat a frying kettle or large frying pan half full of smoking-hot fat.
Beat the eggs until liquid, roll the crabs in the crumbs, dip them in the beaten eggs, then roll them in the crumbs again.
Fry the crabs in the hot fat until they are brown all over, then remove them with a skimmer.
Drain on brown paper to remove excess grease and serve hot with lemon wedges for garnish.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together387 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together387 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).