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Hot Crab

A baked crab stuffed with gravy or cream, seasoning, and breadcrumbs, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

serves 6

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 crab

  1. Remove the meat from the crab and cut the solid part into small pieces.

  2. Mix the crab meat with gravy or cream, seasoning, and bread crumbs.

  3. Fill the crab shell with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for five minutes on each side.

  2. Prepare six pieces of toast and place a crab on top of each.

  3. Glaze the crabs with a little maitre d'hotel butter and serve immediately.

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. Cream + buttertop 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 + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Forms the main filling and provides the dish's core flavour and texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the crab mixture so it holds together when baked.
Rich gravy or cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft rather than dry.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds fat and flavour to the glaze and encourages browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Baking the filled shells. Too long in the oven dries out the crab and toughens the proteins, while too short leaves the filling cold in the centre. Checking that the crab is hot through and lightly browned helps get the texture right.

“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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