Skip to main content
Main

Hot Crab, or Lobster

A hot crab or lobster dish cooked with butter, flour, vinegar, cayenne, nutmeg, and optional breadcrumbs or meat jelly.

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

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 ↓

Hot Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flake the crab or lobster meat into small pieces using forks.

Make the crab

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat and stir in the flour.

  2. Add the flaked meat and mix well.

  3. Pour in the vinegar and season with cayenne and nutmeg.

  4. Heat the mixture thoroughly and serve immediately in the shell or scallop shells.

  5. Optionally, top with bread crumbs before serving.

  6. For added flavor, mix in meat jelly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 or lobster meat
Provides the main body and sweet, delicate flavor of the dish.
Butter
Carries the flavor and gives the mixture richness and a smooth, moist texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter so it binds the meat into a cohesive mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and sweet shellfish.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly. Flour thickens only as the butter and flour cook through and the mixture heats evenly, so underheating leaves a raw, pasty texture. Heat until the mixture is hot all the way through before serving.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes