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Deviled Crabs or Lobster, New Orleans

A New Orleans-style deviled crab or lobster dish with bread crumbs, cream, butter, and seasonings baked to a golden crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Deviled Crabs or Lobster, New Orleans

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab or lobster and break it into fine pieces.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs with thin cream to form a soft paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the crab or lobster with the paste, adding salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Spoon the mixture into shells and top with finely powdered buttered crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

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. Cream + buttertop 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. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 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 seafood filling and its savory flavor.
Fine fresh bread crumbs
Soak up cream to form a soft paste that binds the filling.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender as it bakes.
Butter
Coats the topping crumbs so they brown evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking at 400°F sets the topping and browns it through; stopping too early leaves the crumbs pale and the filling wet, while over-baking can dry the cream-bound filling.

“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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