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Deviled Crabs

A crab dish seasoned with cayenne pepper, mustard, salt, and sauce, topped with cracker crumbs and butter, served in the shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Deviled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crab and extract the meat.

  2. Season the crab meat with cayenne pepper, mustard, coarse sea salt, and your preferred table sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a covered saucepan with enough hot water to prevent burning.

  2. Add moistened cracker crumbs and butter to the saucepan.

  3. Serve the mixture in the crab shell, garnished with a sprig of parsley.

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

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

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 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 meat
Forms the main body and flavor of the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the filling into a spoonable mass.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Heating in a covered saucepan with hot water. Gentle, covered heat with water in the pan keeps the crab meat and crumbs from scorching or drying out. Too little water or too much direct heat can cause sticking and burning on the base of the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, pepper, mustard, sauce, cream, butter. 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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