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Baked Crab

A crab stuffed with a breadcrumb and mustard mixture, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Crab

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab and cut it into small pieces.

  2. In a bowl, combine the crab meat, bread crumbs, mustard, egg, essence of anchovy, and melted butter.

  3. Wash the crab shell and fill it with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle additional bread crumbs on top and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives it its flavour.
Egg
Binds the filling together and helps it set when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, with a crisp top when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, tangy note that balances the sweetness of the crab.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, bread, butter, anchovy, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, bread, butter, anchovy, egg. 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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