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-Crab Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cook the crabs
Place crabs in an earthenware jar and cover.
Set the jar in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until crabs are soft.
Strain the mixture through a linen strainer into a basin.
Make the jelly
Boil the juice for a few minutes, then add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of liquid.
Boil for 20 to 30 minutes until it sets.
Strain again and pour into cups or small molds.
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.
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Crab + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides the main flavour and body of the jelly, releasing their juices during slow oven cooking.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and, as the liquid boils down, helps the juice set into a firm jelly.
The step that matters
Boil for 20 to 30 minutes until it sets. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar. If the mixture is underboiled it stays runny, and if overboiled it becomes hard and candy-like. Testing for a set is needed to get a tender jelly.
“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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