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Crab Flake Cocktail

A chilled crab cocktail with tomato ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, vinegar, pimentos, green pepper, salt, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crab Flake Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the tomato catsup, horseradish, lemon juice, vinegar, pimentos, green pepper, salt, pepper, and paprika.

  2. Add the crab meat and gently combine until well mixed.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the cocktail, providing its flesh and delicate texture.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness, tang and a red colour that forms the cocktail sauce base.
Horseradish
Provides sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the crab.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the catsup.
Lemon juice
Adds fresh acidity and aroma that lifts the flavour of the crab meat.

The step that matters

Combine the crab meat gently. Crab meat is delicate and its flakes break easily. Folding it gently keeps the lumps intact, so the cocktail keeps a pleasant texture rather than turning mushy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, lemon, vinegar, pepper, crab, meat):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, lemon, vinegar, pepper, crab, meat. 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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