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To Broil a Crab

A broiled soft shell crab seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, served with watercress, lemon, and optional tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Broil a Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the crab by removing the spongy substance from the back shell and the apron from the lower part of the shell.

  2. Sprinkle the crab with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge it in flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the crab in butter until cooked through.

  2. Garnish with watercress and lemon, and serve with or without tartar sauce.

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. Watercress + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Soft shell crab
Is the main protein; its thin shell is eaten whole when cooked.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the crab brown and crisp in the butter.
Butter
Conducts heat to the crab surface and adds browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Broil the crab in butter until cooked through. Soft shell crab cooks quickly, and overcooking dries the flesh and toughens it. Watching for a golden coating and opaque flesh helps prevent this.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, pepper, flour, butter, watercress, sauce):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, pepper, flour, butter, watercress, sauce. 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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