Name: Pickled Crab Meat
Ingredients: good cider vinegar; whole cloves; celery seed; 1 clove of garlic; mustard seed; coriander seed (optional); crab meat

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pickled Crab Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the cider vinegar in a pot.
Add a bag containing whole cloves, celery seed, garlic, and mustard seed to the vinegar.
Let the bag steep in the vinegar while it scalds.
Pour the hot vinegar over the picked crab meat, cut into uniform pieces.
Transfer the mixture into a jar and seal until ready to use.

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.

Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,474 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,053 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,668 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Swap the coriander

The recipe marks coriander as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, clove, celery, garlic, mustard, crab):

Tarragonfits better
Allspicefits better
Thymefits better
Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, clove, celery, garlic, mustard, crab. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.