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Minced Crab

A dish of finely chopped crab meat and egg mixed with butter, cream, and sherry, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Minced Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the crab meat and hard-boiled egg very finely.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add the crab mixture.

  2. Pour in the heavy cream and season thoroughly.

  3. Cook for 8 to 9 minutes.

  4. Thicken with a cream sauce.

  5. Stir in the sherry and serve in a chafing dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Crab + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 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 dish and provides its delicate flavor.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds richness and a finely textured body to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the pan.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, and helps thicken the mixture into a sauce.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a subtle sweet, acidic note at the end.

The step that matters

Cook for 8 to 9 minutes. Heating cream gently while it thickens prevents it from curdling or separating. Too much heat can cause the cream to break, leaving a grainy, greasy texture instead of a smooth sauce.

“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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