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To Choose and Prepare Crabs

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Choose and Prepare Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil a pot of water.

  2. Add the crabs and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the crabs and let them cool.

  4. Open the crabs, remove the spongy part, sand-bag, and head.

  5. Empty the shells and pick the meat from the crab and claws.

  6. Mix the crab meat with a little oil, vinegar, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and chopped hard boiled eggs.

  7. Return the mixture to the crab shells and place in the oven to 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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Crab + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together467 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Crab + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

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