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Scalloped Crab

Scalloped Crab is a crab dish cooked in a butter, flour, milk sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Scalloped Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Pick all the meat from the crab, leaving the small claws.

  2. Scald the large shell, rub it with coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt') to cleanse, and then dry it.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and gradually stir in the milk until boiling.

  2. Add the anchovy and seasonings, then stir in the picked crab and heat through.

Fill and garnish

  1. Fill the crab shell with the mixture, sprinkle brown crumbs on top, and garnish with the small claws standing upright.

  2. Rub the hard-boiled egg through a sieve over the dish and finish with a few sprigs of parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  4. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that binds the crab.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving the filling its creamy moisture.
Crab
Provides the main meat, the flavour and texture at the centre of the dish.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and salty umami to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned topping over the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk sauce. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and milk brought to a boil gradually, or lumps form and the sauce stays raw-tasting. Stirring steadily keeps it smooth and properly thickened before the crab goes in.

“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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