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Crab in White Sauce

Crab in white sauce is a crab dish served in its shell with a white sauce and shallot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crab in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix the crab flesh with White Sauce, shallot, salt, pepper, and lemon juice in a bowl.

  2. Wipe out the crab shell and rub it with oil.

  3. Fill the shell with the crab mixture, leveling the top.

Brown and serve

  1. Dredge the top with bread crumbs and brown slightly.

  2. Heat through until warm, especially if the sauce is hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab flesh
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the dish its flavour.
White sauce
Binds the crab and adds moisture and creaminess to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a top layer that browns when heated, adding a crisp surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and sweet crab.

The step that matters

Heat through until warm. The crab is already cooked and the filling is meant to be warmed, not cooked hard. Heating gently and only until warm keeps the crab tender and stops the sauce from splitting or becoming tough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, sauce, shallot, pepper, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sauce, shallot, pepper, 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.

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