Name: Hot Crab
Ingredients: crab; rich gravy or cream; seasoning; fine bread crumbs

Why it works: Crab and cream work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Hot Crab

Ingredients

crab
rich gravy or cream
seasoning
fine bread crumbs

Directions

Remove the meat from the crab and cut the solid part into small pieces.
Mix the crab meat with a little rich gravy or cream, seasoning, and fine bread crumbs.
Fill the crab shell with the mixture.
Place the filled shell into the oven.

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.

Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together317 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Crab + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together387 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

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