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Crabs.

A dish of soft shell crabs cooked with butter, pepper, sea salt, mace, water, flour, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crabs.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Remove the meat from the crab shells.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crab meat with butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and a little water.

  2. Dredge with flour and let simmer for five minutes over low heat.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the crabs in plenty of butter until golden brown, and garnish with parsley.

  2. Serve hot, garnished with the claws arranged around the dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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
Provide the main protein and tender, sweet crab meat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the crabs during frying.
Flour
Dredging coats the crab and helps thicken the simmering liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the crab meat.

The step that matters

Dredge with flour and simmer gently. Flour thickens liquid only when it is evenly coated and heated gently. Over high heat it can clump or scorch, leaving the sauce lumpy or bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, pepper, flour, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, pepper, flour, parsley. 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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