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Salad

Crab Salad

A salad of boiled crab meat, celery, lettuce, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, pick out the crab meat and set aside.

Prepare the salad

  1. Brush and cut the celery into ½ inch pieces.

  2. When ready to serve, mix the celery with the crab meat.

  3. Arrange the mixture neatly in a bowl with the lettuce leaves.

  4. Serve the mayonnaise in a separate bowl.

  5. For a decorative touch, arrange the celery and crab meat in the crab shells and place on salad plates with lettuce.

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. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Crab + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 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 protein and sweet flavour of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds creamy richness and moisture that binds the salad together.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch against the soft crab meat.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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