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Deviled Crabs

Deviled crabs are a fried crab meat mixture seasoned with eggs, bread crumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine crab meat, eggs, bread crumbs, red pepper, salt, and grated onion, and mix the ingredients thoroughly.

Fry

  1. In a frying pan, heat butter and lard until hot.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan, shaping them like potato cakes, and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Crab + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the crab mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body so the mixture can be shaped into cakes.
Crab meat
Provides the main flavor and substance of the cakes.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying, promoting browning and a golden crust.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes. The pan must be hot before the spoonfuls go in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, while a cool pan lets the egg-bound mixture soak up grease and fall apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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