Name: Soft Shell Crabs
Ingredients: soft shell crabs; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; tartare sauce; lemon; parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Soft Shell Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Lift the shell and remove the spongy substance on both sides.
Pull off the apron by putting your thumb under the point in the middle of the under shell.
Wipe the crabs dry.
While alive, place them in a pan and fry in hot butter until brown.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Serve with tartare sauce, garnished with lemon and parsley.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).