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Buttered Crab

A baked dish of crab meat mixed with bread crumbs, parsley and butter, packed into a crab shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Buttered Crab

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crab until cooked, then remove the meat from the shell.

  2. Cut the crab meat into small pieces and mix with bread crumbs and minced parsley.

Fill the shell

  1. Add pieces of butter, season with salt and pepper, and pack the mixture into the crab shell.

  2. Squeeze lime juice or add vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Cover with a thick layer of bread crumbs and dot with remaining butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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
Forms the main filling and gives the dish its sweet, delicate meat flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, and brown to form a crisp top.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the topping turn golden in the oven.
Lime juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich crab and butter flavours.

The step that matters

Packing the filling into the shell. Packing the mixture firmly keeps it from collapsing or drying out while baking, and the bread crumb topping seals in moisture so the filling stays tender and golden rather than dry.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, bread, parsley, butter, pepper. 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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