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Salad

Crab Salad

A salad of crab meat, minced celery, mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce 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

  1. Cut the crab meat into pieces.

  2. Add an equal quantity of minced celery.

  3. Moisten with mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main protein and flavor, with its flaky texture forming the body of the salad.
Minced celery
Adds a crisp, fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft crab meat.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, binding the salad and keeping the crab meat from drying out.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, 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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