Skip to main content
Main

Crabs Scalloped

A baked crab dish with butter, flour, milk, eggs, lemon, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Crabs Scalloped

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crab and eggs

  1. Boil the crabs until the shells are red, then remove the meat from the shells, discarding the stomach, intestine, and soft fins, but saving the green fat and curd.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs finely and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat until bubbling.

  2. Gradually stir in the milk and bring to a boil for a moment.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then add the crab meat, chopped eggs, and lemon juice and rind.

  4. Heat the mixture together, then transfer it to scallop shells or a suitable baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle cracker crumbs on top and brown in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the filling together.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they are stirred through.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the hot oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux and milk sauce. Flour must bubble in the melted butter so its starch is cooked out, and the milk must be added gradually while stirring to avoid lumps and a thin, pasty sauce.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes