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Deviled Crabs

Deviled Crabs are crab shells filled with seasoned crab meat and a butter‑bread crumb mixture, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the crabs and season with pepper, salt, dry mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan, then add the butter and bread crumbs along with the chopped parsley. Stir and cook for a few minutes until combined.

  3. Remove from heat and mix the milk mixture with the crab meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill each crab shell with the mixture, top with cracker crumbs, and add a bit of butter on top.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the dish its flavor.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and creates a creamy, binding base for the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and thicken the filling so it holds together in the shell.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Mixing the milk mixture into the crab meat. Adding the hot milk mixture too quickly or while it is still very hot can cook the delicate crab meat unevenly and make the filling loose. Letting it cool slightly before combining helps keep the texture tender and the filling well bound.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, sauce, milk, butter, bread, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, sauce, milk, butter, bread, parsley. 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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