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Crab Sandwich

A sandwich made with deviled crab, hard‑boiled egg yolk, butter, lemon juice, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Crab Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Sift the yolk of the hard boiled egg through a sieve.

  2. Moisten the sifted yolk with butter.

  3. Add chopped crab and lemon juice to the yolk mixture and mix to a paste.

Assemble and cut

  1. Spread the crab mixture between thin slices of buttered bread.

  2. Press the slices together, then cut into fingers, triangles, or desired shapes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Crab + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + crabtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main filling and its savory flavor.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Mashed into a smooth base that helps bind the crab into a paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the sifted yolk.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab filling.
Bread
Forms the outer layers and holds the filling in place.

The step that matters

Mixing the crab into a paste. Sifting the yolk first breaks up lumps so the butter and lemon juice blend evenly. Mixing until smooth keeps the filling spreadable and prevents it from soaking unevenly into the bread.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

More crab sandwich recipes

Mock 4

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