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Crab Cakes

A fried dish of crab meat mixed with cream, flour, and seasonings, coated in egg and cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the cream and flour together in a saucepan until thick, then let it cool.

Form the cakes

  1. Mix the crab meat with the cooled sauce, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Form the mixture into cakes.

  3. Roll each cake in beaten egg, then in cracker dust.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes quickly in hot lard until golden 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crab flake
Forms the main body and flavor of the cakes.
Cream and flour sauce
Thickens the crab mixture and keeps it moist so the cakes hold together.
Egg
Binds the cakes and, with cracker dust, helps form a crisp coating.
Cracker dust
Creates a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes. Frying quickly in hot lard sets the crust and browns the outside before the moist interior overheats or breaks apart. Cakes fried in cool fat absorb grease and turn soggy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, cream, flour, egg. 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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