Name: Crab with Rice or Potatoes
Ingredients: 1 crab; 1 cup cooked rice or mashed potatoes; ½ teaspoon salt; a pinch of pepper; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 1 teaspoon dripping (or butter)

Why it works: Crab and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 812 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Crab with Rice or Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

Remove the crab meat from the shell and place a layer in a greased baking dish.
Cover with a layer of cooked rice or mashed potatoes, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and vinegar.
Repeat the layering process until the dish is full.

Bake

Cover the dish with greased paper and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together117 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab: Forms the main filling and supplies the savory flavor of the dish.
Cooked rice or mashed potatoes: Adds bulk and moisture between the crab layers, keeping the bake soft.
Vinegar: Adds a slight acidity that brightens the rich crab flavor.

“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.