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Potted Crab

Crab meat mixed with spices, baked in butter, then chilled in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and crab work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Potted Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the shell and claws of the crab.

  2. Pound the crab meat in a mortar with salt, cayenne, and pounded mace.

  3. Press the mixture into small jars and cover with butter.

Bake and set

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, pour freshly-clarified butter over the crab mixture.

  3. Set aside until the butter hardens.

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. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 potted mixture and gives its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and its cooled layer seals the crab from air.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the crab.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat that balances the richness of the crab and butter.

The step that matters

Pour the clarified butter after cooling. Clarified butter poured while the crab is still hot would not set into a clean seal. Letting the mixture cool first lets the butter harden into a firm layer that keeps air out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, crab, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, pepper, 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.

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