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Crab, Devilled

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat 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 ↓

Crab, Devilled

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare the crab meat by removing it from the shell.

  2. Mix flour with seasoning.

  3. Dip each piece of crab meat in the flour mixture.

  4. Coat the crab meat thickly with beaten eggs.

  5. Toss the coated crab meat in breadcrumbs.

  6. Heat oil in a deep pan and fry the crab meat until nicely browned.

  7. Arrange the fried crab on a folded napkin or dish-paper.

  8. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with your choice of sauce.

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. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, flour, egg, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, flour, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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