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Mock-Crab

A mayonnaise-like sauce made with cheese, mustard, oil, vinegar, pepper, and prawn meat, shaped into a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock-Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Pound the cheese, mustard powder, salad oil, anchovy vinegar, and spiced pepper until it resembles a thick mayonnaise sauce.

  2. If necessary, add more oil to achieve the desired consistency.

  3. Mix in the pounded prawn meat.

Serve

  1. Shape the mixture into a mold for 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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  5. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Prawn meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and the bulk of the mock crab texture.
Good fresh cheese
Forms the creamy base that binds the mixture together.
Mustard powder
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the cheese and oil.
Salad oil
Adds fat and smoothness, loosening the mixture to a mayonnaise-like consistency.
Anchovy vinegar
Adds acidity and savory depth that gives the mixture its briny character.

The step that matters

Pounding the cheese with the seasonings into a thick sauce. Emulsifying the oil into the cheese and vinegar gives a smooth, stable base. If the oil is added too quickly or the mixture is not worked enough, it can separate or stay grainy, so the prawn meat is then mixed in evenly without breaking the texture.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, cheese, anchovy, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cheese, anchovy, vinegar, 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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