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Crab a LA Creole

A sauce of cooked crab, onions, tomatoes, bell pepper, celery, and spices simmered with lemon, Tabasco, Worcestershire, sherry, and crab fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crab a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Break off and crack the legs of the crabs.

  2. Remove the body and cleanse it in cold water.

  3. Cut each body in half and then into four pieces.

  4. Drain the yellowish liquor from the back shell and scoop out the creamy fat for later use.

  5. Roast half of one crab's back shell in the oven until brown, being careful not to burn it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a large saucepan, brown the sliced onions in butter.

  2. Add the canned tomatoes, bell pepper, celery, and cloves.

  3. Cook for 15 minutes to extract flavors.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, salt, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, sherry (or white wine), curry powder, and the roasted crab shell pieces.

  5. Cook for another 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

  6. Strain the mixture through a colander and return the sauce to the saucepan.

  7. Add the crab fat, a tablespoon of butter, and enough flour or corn starch to thicken the 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned in butter to build a sweet, savory base for the sauce.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and liquid of the sauce.
Sherry or white wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Flour or corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the crab.
Crab fat
Adds rich, concentrated crab flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour or corn starch. Starch must be fully hydrated and gently heated to thicken. Adding it dry or boiling it unevenly can leave lumps or a thin, unevenly set sauce.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, onion, butter, tomato, pepper, celery, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, onion, butter, tomato, pepper, celery, 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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