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Hot Crab, or Lobster

A simple hot crab or lobster dish flavored with butter, flour, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Hot Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the crab or lobster meat and pull it into light flakes with forks.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the meat with butter and flour.

Cook

  1. Heat slowly over low heat, stirring gently.

  2. Add cayenne pepper and vinegar, mixing well.

  3. Grate in a little nutmeg and heat until warmed through.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its seafood flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the meat moist as it warms.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the mixture slightly as it heats, giving it a creamier body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and seafood flavors.

The step that matters

Heat slowly over low heat, stirring gently.. High heat or vigorous stirring can toughen delicate crab or lobster meat and cause the butter to separate. Gentle heat keeps the flakes tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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