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Baking

Crab Creole

A baked crab dish layered with mustard, cayenne, salt, butter, parsley, breadcrumbs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Crab Creole

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.

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs or lobsters, then pick the meat finely.

  2. Place the crab meat in a deep baking dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Alternate layers of crab with made mustard, cayenne, coarse sea salt, butter, chopped parsley, and bread crumbs until the dish is filled.

  2. Pour milk over the layers until it absorbs no more.

  3. Top with a layer of bread crumbs and dot with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is 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. Butter + milktop 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. Mustard + peppertop 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 or lobster
Provides the main meat, which forms the body of the dish.
Milk
Gets absorbed by the layers, adding moisture so the dish stays tender as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add structure between layers, then brown on top.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the top as it melts.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts the richness of the seafood and butter.

The step that matters

Pouring the milk over the layers. Milk should be added until the layers stop absorbing it. Too little leaves the dish dry, while too much pools and makes it soggy. The bread crumbs and crab soak it up as the dish bakes.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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