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Deviled Crabs

A baked crab mixture with eggs, milk, flour, and butter, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Deviled Crabs

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.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour and bring to a boil.

Fill and bake

  1. Chop the egg whites finely and add to the crab meat.

  2. Rub the egg yolks through a sieve and mix into the crab mixture.

  3. Fill the crab shells with the mixture.

  4. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 and supplies the dish's flavor.
Milk
With flour, thickens into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that gives the filling a creamy, cohesive texture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling, with yolks giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked.

The step that matters

Whisk in the flour and bring to a boil. Flour must be fully whisked into the milk and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty taste and a thin binder that lets the filling run.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, meat, milk, flour, egg, butter, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, meat, milk, flour, egg, butter, 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.

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