Why it works: Crab and sauce work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 238 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Soft-shell Crabs, Broiled
Ingredients
Directions
Clean the soft-shell crabs thoroughly and dry them.
Season lightly with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.
Drop the crabs into boiling water for 1 minute.
Remove the crabs and broil them over a clear, hot fire.
Serve very hot with a la maitre d'hotel sauce or tartar sauce.
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.
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Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together238 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together922 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,303 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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
More soft-shell crabs recipes
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