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Buttered Crab, or Lobster

A dish of crab or lobster cooked with butter, mustard, vinegar, spices, and optional meat jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine crab or lobster flesh with butter in a saucepan.

  2. Heat slowly over a gentle flame.

  3. Mix in mustard and vinegar until smooth.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and add grated nutmeg.

  5. Heat until well combined, then serve immediately in the shell or scallop shells.

  6. Optionally top with breadcrumbs and serve with meat jelly.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster flesh
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture as it melts with the seafood.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and pungency that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Heating slowly over a gentle flame. Crab and lobster flesh are delicate and turn tough and rubbery when overheated. Gentle heat melts the butter and warms the meat evenly, keeping it tender and keeping the emulsion smooth rather than oily.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat. 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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