Why it works: Crab and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓
Gombo Aux Crabes Moux--soft Crab Gumbo
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the shells from the soft-shell crabs and discard the gills.
Cut off the small claws and halve the large claws.
Cut the crabs into six pieces (or eight if large).
Fry the crabs in butter.
Finish the soup as explained for Chicken Gumbo, omitting the chicken.
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.
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Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together812 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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