Name: Crab, to Dress
Ingredients: 1 medium-sized crab; 1 hard-boiled egg; 2 tablespoons vinegar; 2 tablespoons salad oil; salt; pepper; cayenne; slices of lemon; parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crab, to Dress

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the meat from the crab shells.
Mix the crab meat with vinegar and salad oil, and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Assemble and serve

Clean the large shell and fill it with the crab mixture.
Garnish with slices of lemon, parsley, and the hard-boiled egg (yolk rubbed through a sieve and white coarsely chopped).

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together922 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab: Provides the main body and sweet flavour of the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the crab and balances the richness of the oil.
Salad oil: Adds fat and moisture, coating the crab meat and softening its texture.
Hard-boiled egg: Adds richness and a firm, contrasting texture as a garnish.

“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.