Skip to main content
Main

Crab Meat Mornay

A baked crab dish topped with a creamy Mornay sauce and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Crab Meat Mornay

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour, cornstarch, and salt; stir until well blended.

  3. Gradually pour in the chicken stock while stirring constantly.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes.

  5. Add the milk gradually, bring to a boil again, and stir in the egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter ramekin dishes and place a thin layer of crab meat in each.

  2. Cover the crab meat with the sauce and sprinkle with cheese.

  3. Cook in a broiling oven until the cheese melts and browns.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with cornstarch as it cooks with the butter.
Cornstarch
Adds thickening power, giving the sauce a smooth, stable body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and further thicken the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Crab meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and texture in the dish.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they are added. Bringing the sauce to a boil before adding them, as the recipe directs, makes the yolks thicken it, so the sauce must be stirred well to keep it smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes