Name: Crabs a LA Diable
Ingredients: crabs; butter; mustard; cayenne pepper; salt; black pepper; lemon juice; bread crumbs

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Crabs a LA Diable

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crabs by cleaning and removing the shells.
Melt butter in a pan and add mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper.
Stir in lemon juice and mix well.
Coat the crabs with the mixture and sprinkle with bread crumbs.
Place the crabs in clam shells or porcelain shells.
Broil until golden brown and serve hot.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the mustard

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

Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits better
Spinachfits better
Mustardthe original

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