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To Devil Crab

A crab dish seasoned with salt, pepper, sweet cream, Worcestershire sauce, bread crumbs, and butter, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Devil Crab

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 the crab

  1. Boil the crabs and remove the meat.

  2. Season the crab meat with coarse sea salt, black pepper, sweet cream, and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Pack the seasoned crab meat back into the shells.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs and small bits of butter on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  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

Crabs
Provide the main body of the dish, as the meat that is seasoned and baked.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the crab meat tender during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven and adds a light, crisp texture.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the topping brown and gives a rich flavor.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth that seasons the crab meat.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Baking at 400°F browns the buttered crumbs while the filling heats through. Removing the dish too early leaves the topping pale and the filling underheated, while overbaking dries the crab meat and toughens it.

“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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