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Buttered Crab, or Lobster

A buttered crab or lobster dish seasoned with mustard, vinegar, cayenne, nutmeg, and optional meat jelly, served in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crab or lobster flesh with butter and flour.

  2. Heat slowly over a gentle fire until warmed through.

  3. Mix in the mustard and vinegar until smooth.

  4. Season with cayenne and grate in nutmeg.

  5. For added flavor, stir in a spoonful of meat jelly.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately in the shell or scallop shells, optionally topped with breadcrumbs.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster flesh
Provides the main body and sweet seafood flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the warmed flesh.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and juices so the mixture becomes creamy rather than watery.
Made mustard
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Heat slowly over a gentle fire. Flour thickens only when heated gently and stirred enough to avoid lumps; high heat can scorch the butter, toughen the delicate crab protein, and leave the sauce grainy or separated.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper, meat. 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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