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Soft Shell Crabs

Soft shell crabs are washed, dipped in milk, coated in flour, fried until red, and served with tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Soft Shell Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the crabs and remove the gills from both sides.

  2. Dip the crabs in milk.

  3. Roll the crabs in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the crabs in deep, boiling lard or butter until they are a fine red color.

  2. Serve with tartar sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Soft shell crabs
Form the main body of the dish and cook into a crisp, tender shell.
Milk
Helps the flour coating stick evenly to the crabs.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that fries to a crisp, golden-red crust.
Lard or butter
Conducts heat in deep frying and adds richness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Frying in deep, boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crabs absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp, and the coating may not brown evenly.

“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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