Name: To Boil Crabs or Crawfish
Ingredients: water; caraway seeds; coarse sea salt; fresh parsley; crabs; butter

Why it works: Caraway and parsley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 67 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Boil Crabs or Crawfish

Ingredients

Directions

Set a pot of water on a hot fire and add caraway seeds, coarse sea salt, and fresh parsley.
Wash the crabs thoroughly.
When the water boils, add the crabs and a piece of butter.
Boil for 15 minutes, then serve.

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.

Caraway + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together67 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + crabtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Caraway + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,273 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs: The main ingredient, cooked whole in the seasoned boiling water until done.
Butter: Adds richness and a rounded, savoury fat to the cooking liquid and the crabs.