Skip to main content
Main

Crab a LA Creole

A Creole-style crab dish with tomatoes, onions, bell pepper, celery, lemon, spices, and roasted crab shell pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crab

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

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

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

  4. Drain the yellowish liquor and creamy fat from the crab shells.

  5. Scoop out the fat and set it aside.

  6. Roast half of one crab shell in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

Make the sauce

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

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

  3. Cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Add 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 sauce through a colander and return it to the saucepan.

  7. Add the crab fat, a tablespoon of butter, and enough flour or cornstarch 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Browned in butter first, they build a sweet, savory base for the sauce.
Canned tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that form the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the onions brown for flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Flour or cornstarch (in the method)
Thickens the sauce so it coats the crab rather than running thin.
Crab fat
Adds rich crab flavor to the sauce when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce after straining. Starch needs heat to swell and thicken, so the sauce must be kept at a simmer while stirred. Adding the starch to a fully boiling sauce or without stirring can cause lumps, and a thin sauce will not hold the crab well.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, tomato, pepper, clove, lemon, sugar. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes