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Sauce

Crab Sauce

A sauce made from crab meat, butter, bread crumbs, vinegar, nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Crab Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shells and mix it with nutmeg and seasoning.

Combine and bake

  1. Add butter, bread crumbs, and vinegar to the mixture.

  2. Combine everything and place it back in the crab shell.

  3. Brown the filled shell before the fire or with a salamander.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main body of the sauce and its rich seafood flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, moist texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body and a light texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter flavors.

The step that matters

Browning the filled shell. Browning relies on high direct heat, which toasts the bread crumbs and butter and creates savory flavor. Too little heat leaves the filling pale and underdeveloped, while too much can scorch the crumbs before the filling heats through.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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