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Crab Kedgeree

A savory dish of crab, rice, eggs, and butter seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flaked crab and heat in the butter.

  3. Stir in the cooked rice, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add the chopped white of the hard-boiled egg and heat thoroughly.

  5. Serve on a dish, topping with the grated yolk of the hard-boiled egg.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

  3. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Rice + crabtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 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
Provides the main flavour and flaked texture of the dish.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and body, absorbing the butter to give the dish substance.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives the dish richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds soft, savoury texture from the chopped white and rich yolk topping.

The step that matters

Heat the egg white thoroughly. Egg white must be heated until fully set so it is safe to eat and firm rather than slimy in the mixture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, crab, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, crab, egg, pepper. 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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