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To Deess Crab

A crab dish baked with butter, herbs, broth, sherry, lemon, cayenne, and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Deess Crab

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and sauté the shallots and parsley until soft.

  2. Add the sweet herbs and broth or water, then boil for a few minutes and remove the herbs.

  3. Stir in the grated roll, olive oil, sherry, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  4. Add the crab to warm it through.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into the crab shell.

  2. Top with additional bread crumbs and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes to brown.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Softened in butter to build a sweet, aromatic base for the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the shallots and parsley.
Roll bread crumbs
Soaks up the liquids and thickens the filling so it holds together in the shell.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that balances the rich crab.
Lemon juice
Brightens the flavour with acidity and cuts the richness of the butter and oil.
Crab (in the method)
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Warming the crab through without overcooking it. Crab meat is delicate and its proteins toughen and turn rubbery when overheated, so it should only be warmed in the filling before baking.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, thyme, olive, sherry, lemon, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, thyme, olive, sherry, lemon, pepper. 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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