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Crab to Stew

A crab stew made with wine, spices, bread crumbs, and an egg yolk vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab to Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the meat from the crab and clean it from the skin.

Cook the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the crab meat, white wine, nutmeg, pepper, and salt over low heat.

  2. Add the crumbs of bread.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with vinegar and add it to the pan.

  4. Shake the saucepan for a minute and serve on a plate.

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

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

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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 protein and flavour of the stew.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the crab flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and help thicken the stew slightly.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies with the liquid and enriches the texture as it sets.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can scramble if the pan is too hot. Keeping the heat low and adding the yolk while stirring helps it blend smoothly into the stew.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, white wine, pepper, bread, egg, 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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