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Crab, Dressed

A crab prepared by mixing its meat with bread crumbs, butter, lemon juice, and seasoning, then refilling the shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crab, Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the crab and carefully remove the meat from the small claws.

  2. Mix the crab meat with the inside of the crab, bread crumbs, butter, lemon juice, and seasoning to form a paste.

  3. Wash and dry the crab shell, then fill it with the mixture.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Finely flake the white meat from the large claws and pile it on each side of the shell.

  2. Decorate with chopped parsley and coraline pepper.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main meat that forms the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the crab meat into a spreadable paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the paste stay soft and flavorful.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab meat.

The step that matters

Forming the paste. Mixing the crab meat with the bread crumbs and butter needs to be even so the filling holds together and is not dry or watery. Too little binder leaves it loose, while too much makes it dense and pasty.

“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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