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Baking

To Cook Crabs

Cakes made from crabs, soda crackers, butter, egg, pepper, and salt, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

To Cook Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the picked crabs, rolled soda crackers, melted butter, beaten egg, pepper, and coarse sea salt. Stir the mixture with a spoon until well combined.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes 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. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Picked crabs
Provide the main body and flavor of the cakes.
Rolled soda crackers
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the cakes set when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the crab mixture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the cakes.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy, and the binder may not set before the outside browns. Hot fat sears the surface quickly, forming a crust that helps the cakes hold together.

“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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