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Salad

To Dress Crab Cold

A chilled crab salad with mustard, vinegar, white pepper, and cayenne.

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 ↓

To Dress Crab Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Open the crabs and remove all the soft creamy part into a plate.

  2. Add the white meat from the claws to the creamy part and mix well.

Mix and serve

  1. Combine with mustard, vinegar, white pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Clean one crab shell and fill it with the mixture.

  3. Garnish with parsley and the small claws.

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 + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Crab + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 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

Crabs
Provide the main meat and rich, sweet flavor of the salad.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps bind the mixture together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab meat.
Cayenne
Adds gentle heat that balances the sweetness of the crab.
White pepper
Adds mild heat and a earthy aroma to the mixture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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