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Devilled Crabs

A baked crab mixture with crackers, butter, lemon, vinegar, eggs, mustard, and spices, topped with cracker crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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

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, combine the crab meat, powdered crackers, melted butter, lemon peel and juice, vinegar, chopped hard-boiled egg, beaten raw egg, mustard, salt, and pepper. Mix thoroughly.

  2. Fill china fish or shells with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Scatter cracker crumbs over the top and dot with bits of butter.

  2. Baste with a little cold water.

  3. Bake for 15 minutes or until 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 seafood flavor.
Cracker crumbs
Bind the filling and absorb liquid so it holds its shape.
Raw egg
Binds the filling together as it cooks and sets.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds body and a softer, creamy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Baste with a little cold water. Water added to the surface gives moisture so the top does not dry out, and the crab filling is not overcooked before the crumbs brown.

“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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