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Dessert

Crabs a LA Newburg

A creamy crab dish with egg yolks, butter, cream, sherry, and seasonings served over toasted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Crabs a LA Newburg

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the egg yolks with the flour and half of the butter until smooth.

  2. Place the mixture in a double boiler and melt it over simmering water.

  3. Gradually add the cream, stirring until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the crab meat and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Steam for 5 minutes, then add the remaining butter cut into small pieces and the sherry.

  3. Serve on toasted crackers.

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

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

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its flavor and texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Stabilizes the butter and yolk mixture so the sauce thickens without separating.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, thickening into a smooth sauce with the yolks.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream, stirring until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too quickly. Gentle heat over simmering water and adding cream slowly keeps the sauce smooth while the yolks thicken it.

“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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