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Minced Crab

A creamy crab dish with egg, butter, cream, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Minced Crab

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine crab meat, chopped egg, butter, and cream in a pan.

  2. Season thoroughly and cook over medium heat for 8 to 9 minutes.

  3. Thicken with a cream sauce.

  4. Stir in sherry and serve in a chafing dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 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 + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main body and delicate sweet flavor of the dish.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds soft texture and mild richness to the minced mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and, as it reduces, thickens into the sauce.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a touch of sweetness and acidity at the end.

The step that matters

Cook the cream gently. Cream can separate or scorch if it boils hard over medium heat. Gentle, steady heat lets it reduce slowly into a smooth sauce that coats the crab.

“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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