Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Crab in Shell

A baked crab dish served in shells with butter sauce, pepper, breadcrumbs, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Devilled Crab in Shell

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. Open the 3 cans of crab meat and drain.

  2. Mix the crab meat with the rich butter sauce and pepper.

  3. Butter the insides of the crab shells.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each shell with the crab mixture, rounding it up.

  2. Press fine bread crumbs on top of each filled shell.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown, basting with melted butter.

Serve

  1. Serve on platters lined with lettuce leaves.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 filling, giving it its flavor and substance.
Rich butter sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the crab filling stays tender rather than dry.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown, basting with melted butter. Butter promotes browning through the Maillard reaction and helps keep the surface from drying out. Baking too long or too little changes the texture of the crab and topping.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, butter, sauce, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, butter, sauce, pepper, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes