Why it works: Crab and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓
Jelly Op Siberian Crabs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crabs
Remove the stalks from the crabs, then wash and weigh them.
In a pot, add 1 pint of water for every 1.5 pounds of crabs and boil gently until the crabs are broken but not pulpy.
Pour the mixture into a jelly bag and let the juice drain until it is clear.
Make the jelly
Weigh the juice and transfer it to a clean preserving pan.
Boil the juice quickly for 15 minutes.
Stir in 0.75 pounds of roughly powdered sugar until dissolved.
Boil the jelly for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, skimming off any foam.
Pour the jelly into ornamental moulds.
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.
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Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together407 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Siberian crabs
- Provide the natural pectin and tart juice that allow the jelly to set.
- Fine sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firm when boiled with the juice.
The step that matters
Draining the juice until clear. Pressing the pulp or rushing the drain pushes solids into the juice, which makes the jelly cloudy. Letting it drip through the jelly bag undisturbed keeps it clear.
“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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