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 ↓
Crab Dressed
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crab
Remove the meat from the crab shell.
Make the salad
In a bowl, mix the crab meat with vinegar and salad oil.
Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, and pepper.
Serve
Clean the large crab shell and fill it with the crab mixture.
Garnish with slices of lemon, parsley, and the hard-boiled egg (yolk rubbed through a sieve and white coarsely chopped).
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.
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Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,037 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together34,122 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,814 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together922 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
- Forms the main body of the salad, providing the meat texture and flavour.
- Salad oil
- Adds fat and richness, coating the crab meat and softening its taste.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity that brightens the crab and balances the richness of the oil.
- Hard-boiled egg
- Adds creamy yolk and firm white as a rich, mild garnish.
The step that matters
Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, and pepper. Crab meat is mild and dilutes easily, so seasoning must be tasted and adjusted; salt in particular brings out flavour, and cayenne and pepper add heat that is hard to remove once mixed in.
“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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