Name: Crabs with Cream
Ingredients: ¼ pound bread crumbs; ¼ pint cream; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; a few grains cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon tarragon vinegar; butter for topping

Why it works: Pepper and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crabs with Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Prepare the crab meat as directed.
Mix bread crumbs and cream with pepper, salt, cayenne, and tarragon vinegar.

Bake and serve

Cover the mixture with bread crumbs and small bits of butter in the crab shells.
Heat the mixture in a saucepan until hot, then place it in the shells.
Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven and serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,399 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Cream: Adds moisture and richness, helping the crumb mixture stay soft under the crust.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the cream and form a light body that holds the filling together.
Butter: Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown in the oven.
Tarragon vinegar: Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich cream and crab.

The step that matters

Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven and serve immediately. Browning needs enough heat to toast the crumbs and butter without drying the cream beneath. Serving straight from the oven keeps the top crisp and the filling hot, since the crust softens as it cools.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, pepper, vinegar, butter):

Tarragonthe original
Parsleyfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, pepper, vinegar, butter. 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.