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Devilled Crab

A crab dish with crab meat mixed with cream, vinegar, bread crumbs, spices, baked, topped with butter, garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Crab

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the meat from the crab, discarding the inedible parts near the head.

  2. In a bowl, mix the crab meat with cream, vinegar, bread crumbs, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the crab shell with the mixture, sprinkle with browned bread crumbs, and dot with butter.

  2. Heat in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until warmed through.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with toast or brown bread and butter.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  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
Provides the main body of meat that the dish is built around.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft and not dry.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich crab meat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body, and brown on top for color.

The step that matters

Heat in the oven until warmed through. Crab meat is delicate and can dry out or toughen with prolonged high heat, so it should be heated only until just warmed through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, cream, vinegar, bread, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, cream, vinegar, bread, nutmeg, butter. 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.

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