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Deviled Crab

Deviled Crab is a stuffed crab shell filled with crab meat, breadcrumbs, eggs, lemon juice, spices, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the crabs, then remove the meat and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Clean the crab shells thoroughly.

  3. In a bowl, mix the crab meat, bread crumbs, chopped eggs, lemon juice, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

  4. Combine the mixture with cream or Bechamel sauce.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the cleaned shells with the mixture and smooth the tops.

  2. Sprinkle sifted bread crumbs over the filled shells.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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 filling and provides the dish's flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and help bind the filling together.
Cream or bechamel sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays creamy when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at 400°F browns the bread crumb topping through the Maillard reaction. Stop once golden, because longer heat dries the creamy filling out.

“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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