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Dressed Crab

Crab meat mixed with mustard and salad oil, returned to the crab shell and garnished with claw meat, legs, parsley and egg yolk.

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

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the inside of the crab.

  2. Mix the crab meat with mustard and salad oil.

Assemble

  1. Pour the mixture back into the crab shell.

  2. Top with the white meat from the claws.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with the crab legs and parsley.

  2. Rub the hard boiled egg yolk through a wire sieve over the garnish.

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

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

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Crab + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Mustard + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Crab + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main body of the dish, with sweet, delicate flesh.
Crab claw white meat
Adds firm, flaky texture to the topping.
Mustard
Helps emulsify the oil into the dressing and adds a sharp note.
Salad oil
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the crab meat rich and tender.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a fine, crumbly texture when sieved.

The step that matters

Mixing the crab with mustard and oil. Mustard helps the oil bind into the crab rather than separating out. Mixing thoroughly spreads the seasoning and fat evenly, so the meat stays moist and well flavoured throughout.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, mustard, meat, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, mustard, meat, egg. 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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