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Crab Toast

A toast topped with a crab and celery mixture simmered with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Crab Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the crab meat, celery, flour, cream, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer until the moisture is mostly evaporated.

Serve

  1. Spoon the mixture onto thin slices of toast.

  2. Sprinkle a little sherry over the top.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 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 meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and substance of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cream and celery mixture as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and body that thickens into a spreadable filling.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a mild vegetal flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Simmer until the moisture is mostly evaporated. Cooking off excess liquid keeps the filling thick enough to stay on the toast instead of soaking it and making it soggy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, crab, meat, flour, cream, pepper, sherry. 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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