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Crab Salad

A salad of shredded crab, lettuce, watercress, tomato, beetroot, and hard‑boiled egg dressed with oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shell and shred it finely.

  2. Wash and dry the lettuce, then break or cut it into small pieces.

  3. Wash and pick the watercress, breaking it into small pieces.

  4. Slice the tomato thinly.

Dress and assemble

  1. In a bowl, mix the salad oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the lettuce and watercress to the bowl, stirring lightly until mixed.

  3. Gently fold in the crab meat.

  4. Garnish with slices of beetroot, tomato, and the hard-boiled egg, which should be rubbed through a wire sieve.

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. Lettuce + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Watercress + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main protein and flavour of the salad, folded in gently to keep its texture.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds richness and a creamy texture when pushed through a sieve for garnish.
Salad oil
Carries flavour and coats the leaves, adding a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and crab.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp base of the salad, giving bulk and a light, crunchy texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the crab meat. Crab meat is delicate and breaks apart easily. Folding gently keeps the flakes intact, while vigorous stirring would shred them and make the salad mushy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, egg, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, beetroot, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, egg, vinegar, lettuce, watercress, beetroot, pepper. 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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