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To Boil Crabs

A method for boiling crabs, then frying them with butter, oil, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Boil Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the crabs for 20 minutes.

  2. Wipe them clean and crack the claws.

  3. Rub the shells with oil.

  4. Dish them as you would lobster.

Clean and brown

  1. For soft crabs, remove the claws and cut them open.

  2. Remove the sand bag and spongy part.

  3. In a frying pan, melt some butter and brown the crabs on both sides.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 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

Crabs
The main protein, cooked by boiling and then browned in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the crab surfaces brown in the pan.
Oil
Coats the shells, adding a thin layer of fat to the surface.

The step that matters

Boil the crabs for 20 minutes. Boiling time sets how thoroughly the crab meat cooks. Too short leaves meat undercooked, while too long can make it tough and dry.

“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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