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Stuffed Crab

Crab meat stuffed into shells, baked with breadcrumbs, spices, egg, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffed Crab

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

  1. Boil the crabs and pick the meat into bits, keeping the shells whole.

  2. Rub the shells with oil or butter.

Fill and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the crab meat, bread crumbs, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, chopped egg, lemon juice, and enough butter or cream to bind the mixture.

  2. Fill the cleaned shells with the mixture.

  3. Dust the tops with additional bread crumbs and butter.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, while the topping browns in the oven.
Hard-boiled egg
Binds the filling and adds a firmer, slightly rich texture once set.
Butter or cream
Adds fat and moisture so the mixture holds together and stays tender.

The step that matters

Binding the filling to the right moisture. Too little butter or cream leaves the filling dry and crumbly, while too much makes it loose and greasy. The bread crumbs and egg absorb and set the liquid, so add the fat gradually until the mixture just holds together.

“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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