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Deviled Crab

Deviled Crab is a baked crab meat mixture with milk, flour, butter, mustard, bread crumbs, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Crab

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk and flour; cook until smooth.

  3. Stir in butter and mustard until well mixed.

  4. Add bread crumbs, lemon juice, salt, and pepper; mix well.

  5. Fold in the chopped crab meat and hard-boiled egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into crab shells, dot with butter, and bake until heated through.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and bulk of the filling.
Milk
Combined with flour to form a smooth, thickened base that holds the filling together.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the filling stay moist.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture that helps bind the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the milk and flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked fully into the milk so it thickens evenly; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and lumps, while stirring keeps starch from clumping and gives the filling a smooth, cohesive texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, milk, flour, butter, mustard, bread):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, milk, flour, butter, mustard, bread. 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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