Name: Hot Crab
Ingredients: crab meat; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ cup bread crumbs; ⅓ cup vinegar

Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the meat from the crab and clean the shell.
Mix the crab meat with nutmeg, salt, pepper, butter, bread crumbs, and vinegar.

Bake and serve

Return the mixture to the shell and place it before the fire.
Brown it with a salamander if desired.
Serve with dry toast.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 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

Crab meat: Forms the main body of the dish and provides its flavor.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and help give the mixture body and texture.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the mixture brown.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab flavor.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, pepper, butter, bread, vinegar):

Parsleyfits better
Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, pepper, butter, bread, vinegar. 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.