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Cold Crab Ravigote

Cold crab salad with tomatoes, peppers, parsley, mayonnaise, and optional anchovies, pickle, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Crab Ravigote

serves 6

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the tomatoes and peppers finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crab meat, chopped tomatoes, peppers, and parsley.

  3. Add enough mayonnaise to moisten the mixture.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and a dash of paprika.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill each shell heaping full with the mixture.

  2. Garnish with anchovies, a piece of pickle, and lemon slices.

  3. Serve in six shells.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and provides its delicate, sweet flavor.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture so the mixture holds together and stays creamy.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture and a fresh, slightly acidic brightness to the filling.
Green pepper
Adds crisp texture and a grassy, slightly bitter note.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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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