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Deviled Crab

A crab dish with butter, cream, eggs, and cracker crumbs baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Deviled Crab

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled crab.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the cream to the saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil.

Assemble and bake

  1. Chop the egg whites and mix them with the crab meat.

  2. Add the crab and egg mixture to the cream mixture.

  3. Combine the cracker crumbs with the egg yolks and sprinkle the crumb and yolk mixture on top.

  4. Bake the mixture in crab shells at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crab
Provides the main meaty body and flavor of the filling.
Cream
Forms the rich, moist sauce that binds the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Eggs
Add body and help the filling set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the sauce.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until smooth. Flour must cook briefly in the melted butter before liquid is added; stirring it smooth prevents lumps and lets the sauce thicken evenly when the cream is added.

“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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