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Buttered Crab

A crab stuffed with buttered breadcrumbs and seasoned with vinegar, parsley, nutmeg, salt, cayenne, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the crab, discarding any shell pieces.

  2. Weigh the crab meat and mix it with a third of its weight in bread crumbs.

  3. Melt the butter and combine it with the bread crumbs, vinegar, parsley, nutmeg, and seasonings.

  4. Mix the crab meat with the breadcrumb mixture thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pack the mixture back into the crab shell and cover with a thick layer of buttered bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 20 minutes until heated through.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with chopped parsley if desired.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 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

Crab meat
Provides the main flavour and the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the crab meat into a spoonable mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns the crumb topping.
Vinegar
Adds a small acidic lift that brightens the rich crab and butter.

The step that matters

Pack the mixture back into the crab shell and cover with a thick layer of buttered bread crumbs.. The buttered crumb layer is what browns during baking and forms the crust, so it needs to be thick and evenly coated with butter. Thin or dry coverage will brown unevenly and dry out the filling beneath it.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, bread, butter, vinegar, parsley, nutmeg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, bread, butter, vinegar, parsley, nutmeg. 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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