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Cold Crab

A chilled crab dish with minced crab meat, butter, anchovy sauce, cream, and seasonings, served in paper cases.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cold Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crab for 20 minutes.

  2. Once cold, pound the spawn in a mortar with a little butter, then pass it through a sieve onto a plate.

  3. Remove all the meat from the crab, discarding the poisonous parts, and mince it very fine.

Make the mixture

  1. Add pepper, salt, a little mustard, and the anchovy sauce to the minced crab meat.

  2. Froth the cream, then mix in the crab meat and a little of the spawn.

Serve

  1. Put the mixture into paper cases, topping with a little more spawn, and serve.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour of the dish.
Cream
Frothed, it adds a light, creamy texture that binds the crab meat.
Butter
Helps pound the spawn into a smooth paste for sieving.
Anchovy sauce
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the crab mixture.

The step that matters

Frothing the cream. Cream whipped only until frothy holds its shape loosely and blends with the crab without becoming stiff or grainy. Over-whipping can turn it grainy and separate it, so it should stop at a soft froth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, anchovy, sauce, butter, cream, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, anchovy, sauce, butter, cream, 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.

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