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Stuffed Crabs or Lobster

Stuffed crabs or lobster filled with seasoned meat and baked, garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stuffed Crabs or Lobster

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 the shells

  1. Boil the crabs or lobster and pick out the meat, preserving the shells.

  2. Rub the shells with salad oil.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the meat with ¼ as much fine bread crumbs, a pinch of nutmeg, cayenne pepper, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, butter, and a little sweet cream.

  2. If using lobster, rub the coral with the cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Replace the mixture in the shells, dust lightly with bread crumbs, and dot with butter.

  2. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Garnish with parsley and lemon.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crabs or lobster
Provides the main meat that forms the body of the filling.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumb topping brown.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture that keeps the filling tender rather than dry.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich seafood and butter.

The step that matters

Browning in the oven. Baking at 400°F only needs to brown the buttered crumb topping, since the seafood is already cooked. Heating too long dries the meat and toughens it, so watch for a golden top and remove it promptly.

“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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