Name: Dressed Crabs
Ingredients: crabs; nutmeg; pepper; coarse sea salt; white wine; bread crumbs; butter; puff pastry

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dressed Crabs

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.

Boil the crabs, then break the claws and remove all the meat, including the roe.
Mince the crab meat and season it with nutmeg, pepper, salt, and wine.
Mix in bread crumbs and butter according to the size of the crab.
Heat the mixture in a saucepan, stirring constantly until thoroughly heated.
Fill the cleaned crab shells with the mixture and seal the edges with puff pastry.
Brown the filled shells in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, white wine, bread, butter):

Parsleyfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, white wine, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.