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Crab a LA Rey

A crab dish simmered in tomato sauce with onions, green pepper, and cream, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab a LA Rey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the tomatoes with the onion and green pepper for 2-3 hours.

  2. Rinse the mixture through a colander.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the shredded crab with the cream and stir in a little red pepper.

  2. Combine this mixture with the tomato sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the butter and stir until melted.

  4. Serve on small pieces of toast on very hot plates.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

Tomatoes
Form the base of the sauce and supply acidity and body once cooked down.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the crab mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and gloss to the finished sauce when stirred in at the end.
Shredded crab
Provides the main seafood flavour and delicate meat texture.

The step that matters

Bringing the combined mixture to a boil. Once cream and crab meet the hot tomato sauce, boiling can curdle the cream or toughen the crab. Keep heat controlled and stir to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, butter, crab, cream, 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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