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To Butter Crabs, Lobsters, or Cray-fish

A buttery mixture of crab, lobster, or crayfish meat, wine, pickle, gravy, and spices, spooned into shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Butter Crabs, Lobsters, or Cray-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick all the meat from the bodies and claws of the crabs, lobsters, or crayfish and mince it small.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the minced meat with white wine, lemon pickle, rich gravy, butter, salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the beaten egg yolks and heat until hot.

  3. Spoon the mixture into the shells and garnish with an edging of bread.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab, lobster, or crayfish meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives it its seafood flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery filling.
Rich gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the filling.
Lemon pickle
Contributes sharp, tangy acidity that balances the richness.

The step that matters

Thicken with the egg yolks and heat until hot. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture thickens; if it overheats or boils, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, white wine, lemon, butter, pepper, 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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