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Crabs a LA Creole

A sauté of crabs cooked with onions, green pepper, tomatoes, and chicken broth in butter, seasoned with celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crabs a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and minced green pepper and cook slowly for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped tomatoes and cook for a moment.

Cook the crabs

  1. Add the chicken broth and the halved crabs.

  2. Season with celery salt.

  3. Simmer for 10 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.

  1. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Soft shell crabs
Provide the main protein, which cooks gently in the simmering sauce until tender.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and body that form the base of the Creole sauce.
Onion
Softens into a sweet aromatic base for the sauce.
Green pepper
Adds a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and aroma to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for gently cooking the vegetables and adds richness.
Chicken broth
Adds liquid that loosens the sauce and carries savoury flavour during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmering the crabs. Soft shell crabs are delicate and overcooking toughens their meat and can cause the sauce to reduce too far. Keep the heat gentle and watch the timing closely.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, butter, tomato, chicken, crab):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, tomato, chicken, crab. 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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