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Pickled Crab Meat

A preserved crab meat pickled in cider vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pickled Crab Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Scald the cider vinegar in a pot.

  2. Add a bag containing whole cloves, celery seed, garlic, and mustard seed to the vinegar.

  3. Let the bag steep in the vinegar while it scalds.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the hot vinegar over the picked crab meat, cut into uniform pieces.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a jar and seal until ready to use.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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 and absorbs the flavour of the pickling liquid.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the crab and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Whole cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter aroma that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the crab meat. The vinegar must be hot when poured so it can begin to infuse the crab and spices evenly. Pieces cut to uniform size absorb the liquid at a consistent rate, so the pickle tastes even throughout.

Swap the coriander

The recipe marks coriander as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, clove, celery, garlic, mustard, crab):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, clove, celery, garlic, mustard, crab. 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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