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Salad

Crab Salad

A salad of boiled crab meat dressed with a butter, egg yolk, mustard, cayenne, salt, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Chill the picked crab meat.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, and salt to the butter and mix well.

  4. Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly.

  5. Add vinegar until the dressing reaches your desired acidity.

  6. Continue stirring until the dressing thickens like custard.

  7. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the crab meat on a bed of crisp lettuce.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad just before serving.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Picked crab meat
Provides the main savoury protein and bulk of the salad.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the dressing as they gently cook, giving it a custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Mustard powder
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk dressing.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing over low heat. Egg yolks thicken at a gentle temperature, but too much heat scrambles them and the dressing curdles. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, butter, egg, mustard, pepper, vinegar. 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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