Name: Dressed Crab
Ingredients: 1 large crab; 2 tablespoons vinegar; 1 tablespoon cream; Salt; Pepper; Cayenne; 1 tablespoon anchovy essence; 1 teaspoon mustard (mixed); Watercress or parsley for garnish

Why it works: Mustard and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dressed Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

Pick all the meat from the crab.
Wash and dry the crab shell.

Assemble and serve

Mix the picked crab meat with vinegar, cream, anchovy essence, mustard, salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Pile the mixture high in the crab shell.
Garnish with small claws and watercress or 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.

Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together79 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat: Provides the main body and flavour of the dish.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab meat.
Cream: Adds moisture and softness to the crab mixture.
Anchovy essence: Adds a savoury, salty depth to the crab.
Mustard: Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the crab and cream.

Swap the mustard

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

Horseradishfits about as well
Mustardthe original
Lettucefits about as well
Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, vinegar, cream, pepper, anchovy, watercress. 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.