Name: Stuffed Ceabs Oe Lobstee
Ingredients: crabs; salad oil; fine bread crumbs; nutmeg; cayenne pepper; lemon (rind and juice); butter; sweet cream; parsley (for garnish)

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Ceabs Oe Lobstee

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.

Boil the crabs and pick out the meat, preserving the shells whole.
Rub the shells with salad oil.
Mix the crab meat with ¼ as much fine bread crumbs, a pinch of nutmeg, a dash of cayenne pepper, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, butter, and a little sweet cream.
If using lobster, rub the coral with the cream.
Replace the mixture in the shells, dust lightly with bread crumbs, and dot with butter.
Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.
Garnish with parsley and lemon.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).