Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Crabs with Two Eggs

Devilled crabs with two eggs is a baked crab mixture seasoned with crackers, butter, mustard, lemon, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Crabs with Two Eggs

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix crab meat, rolled crackers, butter, chopped egg whites, mashed yolks, lemon juice, salt, mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Spoon the mixture into scallop shells or patty tins.

  3. Sprinkle additional cracker crumbs on top.

Bake

  1. Bake in the 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.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 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

Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and bind the filling, giving it body while keeping it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the filling and add richness to the mixture.
French mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that suits the rich filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and crab flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking too briefly leaves the filling pale and warm rather than set, while overbaking dries the butter-rich mixture. Watch for an even golden top rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, butter, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, butter, egg, lemon, pepper. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes