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Buttered Crab, or Lobster

A simple dish of crab or lobster cooked in butter, mustard, vinegar, and spices, served in the shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab

  1. Combine the crab or lobster flesh with the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Heat slowly over a gentle fire.

  3. Mix in the mustard and vinegar until smooth.

  4. Season with cayenne and add grated nutmeg.

  5. Heat until warmed through.

Serve

  1. Serve in the shell or scallop shells.

  2. Optionally, top with bread crumbs or a spoonful of meat jelly.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster flesh
Provides the main body and sweet, delicate flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the flavours and keeping the flesh tender as it heats.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Heat slowly over a gentle fire. Shellfish proteins toughen and turn rubbery when overheated, so gentle heat keeps the flesh tender while warming it through and keeps the butter from separating or burning.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat. 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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