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 ↓
Vinegar From Crabs
Ingredients
Directions
Steep the crabs
Combine the bruised crabs and cold spring water in a tub.
Cover with a cloth and let it sit for about 9 days, stirring twice daily.
Strain and sweeten
Strain the liquid through a fine cloth into a cask.
Add 1 pound of sugar to every gallon of liquid and stir to dissolve.
Age in the sun
Set the cask in the sun and cover it with a slate or tile until ready for use.
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
- Crabs
- Release their flavor into the water during the long steep.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the finished liquid.
“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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