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Deviled Crabs

Deviled Crabs are crab shells filled with a creamy sauce of egg yolks, butter, flour, and seasonings, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Work the butter and flour together until well combined.

  2. Pour in the cream slowly to avoid lumps.

  3. Cook on the stove until the mixture becomes a very thick sauce.

  4. Gently stir in the picked crab meat, keeping it in large pieces.

Fill and bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into crab shells and cover with bread crumbs.

  2. Place a piece of butter the size of a hickory nut on top of each crab.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and the topping butter helps the crumbs brown.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable, thick sauce that holds the filling together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the body of the thick sauce with the flour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as the crabs bake.

The step that matters

Pour in the cream slowly. Adding liquid gradually while stirring lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, cream, pepper, sauce, bread):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, cream, pepper, sauce, bread. 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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