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Siberian Crabs

Crabs are boiled, then simmered in a sugar syrup until the syrup thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓

Siberian Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the crabs.

  2. Prick the crabs.

  3. Place the crabs in a jar.

  4. Pour boiling water over the crabs.

  5. Cover the jar tightly.

  6. Leave the jar until the next day.

  7. Pick out any shriveled crabs.

Make the syrup

  1. Add ½ pound loaf sugar to the water used to scald the crabs.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  3. Pour the syrup over the crabs.

  4. Let the crabs sit in the syrup for three days.

  5. Remove the crabs from the syrup.

  6. Add more sugar to the syrup.

  7. Boil the syrup again.

  8. Let the syrup cool.

Finish and thicken

  1. Add the crabs back into the syrup.

  2. Heat the mixture on moderate heat.

  3. Boil the mixture two or three times.

  4. Continue boiling until the crabs look clear and the syrup thickens.

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 + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
The fruit being preserved; they soak in the syrup and look clear once it has penetrated.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as the syrup thickens, helps preserve the crabs.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the syrup thickens. As water evaporates, the sugar concentration rises, so the syrup thickens and the fruit becomes clear. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that spoils more easily, while overboiling can make the syrup too stiff.

“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 siberian crabs recipes

Preserved 5

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