Skip to main content
Main

Crab Sausages

Crab sausages are made from cooked crab meat mixed with herbs, spices, egg yolks, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crab Sausages

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine cooked crab meat, chervil, garlic, salt, red pepper, and chives.

  2. Pound the mixture and rub it through a sieve.

  3. Add the raw egg yolks and mix until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into sausage forms and roll them in flour.

  2. Fry in butter over medium heat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with tartar sauce.

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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Chervil + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together271 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked crab meat
Forms the main body of the sausage and provides its flavour.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture so it holds its sausage shape.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown when fried.
Butter
Fries the outside to golden brown and adds richness.

The step that matters

Frying over medium heat. Medium heat lets the outside turn golden brown while the inside heats through. Higher heat can scorch the butter and flour coating before the centre is warm.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, chervil, garlic, pepper, chive, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, chervil, garlic, pepper, chive, egg. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes