Name: Devilled Crab with Two Eggs
Ingredients: 6 ounces crab meat; 2 ounces bread crumbs; 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped; juice of ½ lemon; cayenne pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; cream or cream sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Devilled Crab with Two Eggs

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

Boil the crabs and remove the meat, cutting it into small pieces. Clean the crab shells.
In a bowl, combine crab meat, bread crumbs, chopped eggs, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt. Mix in cream or cream sauce until well combined.

Fill and bake

Fill the cleaned shells with the mixture and smooth the tops. Sprinkle sifted bread crumbs over the filled shells.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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 the dish's flavour.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and help bind the filling, while the topping crisps and browns in the oven.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and richness, helping the filling set lightly as it cooks.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and cream.
Cream or cream sauce: Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at 400°F browns the breadcrumb topping and heats the filling through. Pulling it too early leaves the filling underheated, while overbaking dries the cream-moistened mixture.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Devilled Crab with Two Eggs