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Oyster Crab Pie

A pastry crust filled with crab meat and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Oyster Crab Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the sauce

  1. Warm the crabs and their juice in a saucepan without cooking them.

  2. In another saucepan, rub together the butter and flour over heat until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cream while stirring to keep the mixture smooth.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking pan with puff pastry and preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Combine the crabs with the sauce and pour into the pastry crust.

  3. Cover the filling with another layer of pastry.

  4. Wet the top pastry with milk.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and lemon sauce or a little lemon juice in hot cream.

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

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

  3. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh crabs
Provide the main filling and its flavor, warmed gently so they stay tender.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, making the filling moist.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that browns in the oven around the filling.
Milk
Brushed on top to promote browning of the pastry.

The step that matters

Adding the cream to the roux. Cream should be added gradually while stirring so the flour and butter blend smoothly without lumps. Adding it all at once can leave lumps that are hard to remove, leaving the sauce uneven in texture.

“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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