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Creamed Crab

A sauce of butter, flour, cream, milk, spices, and crab meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub flour into butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add cream and milk, then season with red pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Add the crab

  1. Stir in the finely picked crab meat.

  2. Remove from heat as soon as thoroughly heated.

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. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich mouthfeel and carrying flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cream and milk into a smooth sauce when cooked together.
Cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce thick and smooth.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened by the flour.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and the delicate texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Flour only thickens fully when the starch granules swell in boiling liquid. Stopping too early leaves a thin, floury sauce, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, milk, pepper, meat, crab. 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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