Name: Dressed Crab
Ingredients: 1 boiled crab; 2 tablespoons bread crumbs; 1 hard-boiled egg; 1 tablespoon French vinegar; 2 tablespoons salad oil; 1 teaspoon mustard; parsley; pepper

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dressed Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the meat from the boiled crab and place it in a bowl.
Chop the hard-boiled egg and add it to the crab meat.

Dress and serve

Mix in the bread crumbs, French vinegar, salad oil, and mustard.
Season with parsley and pepper to taste.
Serve chilled or at room temperature.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Crab + mustardtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together193 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled crab: Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the dish.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and give the dressed meat a soft, binding texture.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds richness and a firm, crumbly texture to the crab meat.
French vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and oil.
Salad oil: Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the meat moist.
Mustard: Adds sharp pungency that balances the richness of the oil and egg.

Swap the parsley

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

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, bread, egg, vinegar, mustard, 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.