Name: Dressed Crab
Ingredients: crab meat; salad mixture; slices of lemon

Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Dressed Crab

Ingredients

crab meat
salad mixture
slices of lemon

Directions

Remove the meat from the crab and mince it finely.
Mix the minced crab meat with the salad mixture.
Replace the mixture back into the crab shell.
Garnish with slices of lemon.

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.

Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together387 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Meat + lemontop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,817 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).