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Hot Crab

A stuffed crab filled with seasoned crab meat, curry, chili vinegar, breadcrumbs, and butter, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Carefully pick out the crab meat and mince it.

  2. Season the crab meat with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix curry powder with a little cold gravy or cream.

  4. Combine the mixture with the crab, adding chili vinegar and bread crumbs.

Fill and brown

  1. Clean the crab shell and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Sift more bread crumbs over the top and add a little butter.

  3. Brown it well under a salamander.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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, providing its flavor and substance.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the filling, and form a crisp, browned top.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown.
Cold gravy or cream
Binds the curry powder into a smooth mixture that spreads evenly through the crab.

The step that matters

Brown it well under a salamander. Browning relies on high direct heat to caramelize the bread crumbs and butter on top. Too little heat leaves the crust pale and the filling underheated, while watching closely prevents the crumbs from burning before the filling warms through.

“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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