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Baked Deviled Crabs

A baked crab dish filled with a seasoned egg yolk mixture and topped with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Deviled Crabs

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.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with melted butter.

  2. Add vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice; mix well.

  3. Incorporate the raw egg yolk and chopped white of the boiled eggs into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shells lightly with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle the tops with cracker crumbs and drizzle with melted butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Their mashed yolks form the creamy body of the filling, binding it together.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps the topping brown.
Raw egg yolk
Helps bind the filling so it holds its shape in the shells during baking.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the filling.

The step that matters

Fill the crab shells lightly with the mixture.. Packing the filling tightly squeezes out moisture and makes it dense, while loose filling bakes more evenly and stays tender. Light filling also leaves room for the filling to set without overflowing.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, egg, butter, vinegar, pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, egg, butter, vinegar, pepper, lemon. 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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