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Crab in Shell

A crab prepared with vinegar, pepper, salt, and cayenne, served in its shell on lettuce and garnished with lemon, parsley, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crab in Shell

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the body and claws of the crab.

  2. Season the crab meat with vinegar, pepper, coarse sea salt, and cayenne.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Clean the large shell and fill it with the crab mixture.

  2. Place the shell on a bed of finely cut lettuce.

  3. Garnish with lemon slices, parsley, and the hard-boiled egg.

  4. Cut the egg white and sprinkle it over the top, then rub the yolk through a sieve and allow it to fall on the egg white.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main meat, which is the dish's body and flavour base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the crab meat and balances its richness.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a rich, creamy garnish whose yolk and white contrast in texture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, vinegar, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, vinegar, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg. 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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