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Deviled Crab

A baked crab dish with bread crumbs, egg, lemon juice, and cream or butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Deviled Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut crab meat into small pieces.

  2. Add bread crumbs, chopped egg, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix all with a cream or butter sauce.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill shells with the mixture and smooth the top.

  2. Sprinkle with sifted bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until light brown.

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

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

  2. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Crab + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help hold the filling together.
Chopped egg
Binds the filling as its proteins set when heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab flavor.
Cream or butter sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Baking only until the top is light brown keeps the filling moist. Overbaking dries the crab and sets the egg too firmly, making the filling tough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, bread, egg, cream):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, bread, egg, cream. 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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