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To Dress Crab

A crab dish topped with a butter, herb, and breadcrumb dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Dress Crab

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.

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sauté the shallots and parsley until soft.

  3. Add the sweet herbs and broth (or water) and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Remove the herbs.

  5. Stir in the grated roll crumbs, olive oil, sherry, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  6. Add the crab to the mixture to warm it through.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into the crab shell.

  2. Sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes until browned.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Softened in butter to build a sweet, aromatic base for the dressing.
Roll crumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the dressing body and a light, binding texture.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and flavour to the dressing.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that complements the crab.
Olive oil
Adds fat for moisture and a smooth mouthfeel in the dressing.

The step that matters

Warming the crab in the dressing. Crab is already cooked and delicate, so it should only be warmed through. Overheating it before baking can toughen the meat and make it dry.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, olive, sherry, lemon, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, olive, sherry, lemon, pepper, bread. 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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