Skip to main content
Main

Asparagus with Crab

Cold crab salad served in a shell with asparagus puree, lettuce, hard‑boiled egg quarters, and asparagus tops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Asparagus and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Asparagus with Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shell

  1. Remove crab meat from the shell.

  2. Wash, scrub, and polish the shell.

  3. Place the shell on a bed of finely-cut lettuce in a shallow dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix crab meat with 1/2 cup of asparagus puree.

  2. Place the mixture in the shell and pour the remaining puree over it.

  3. Decorate with quarters of hard-boiled egg and asparagus tops.

  4. Chill in the refrigerator and serve cold.

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. Asparagus + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Meat + asparagustop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Crab + asparagustop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 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
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savory, delicate flavor.
Asparagus puree
Adds moisture and grassy flavor, keeping the crab meat from drying out.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild contrast in texture and a rich flavor as a garnish.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, asparagus, egg):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, asparagus, 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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesCrab SoupCrab Soup39 recipes