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Crab Cakes

Crab cakes made from crab meat, bread crumbs, butter, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and cayenne, fried and served with a cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Crab Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine crab meat, bread crumbs, melted butter, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Form the mixture into cakes.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in a pan until golden brown.

  2. Remove from the pan and prepare a cream gravy with a little thickening.

  3. Serve the gravy separately.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the cakes and provides their flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the cakes hold their shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the crab.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury note that complements the crab.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the cakes. The mixture is held together only by crumbs and butter, so it can fall apart if handled roughly or fried too early. Pressing it firmly into cakes and letting them set helps them keep their shape and form an even golden crust.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Onionfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

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