Name: To Devil Crabs
Ingredients: 12 crabs; 1 loaf of bread; 4 hard-boiled egg yolks; parsley, to taste; Worcestershire sauce, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; cayenne pepper, to taste; ¼ pound butter

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Devil Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

Remove the meat from the crabs and mix it with the egg yolks, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Melt the butter and combine it with the crab mixture.

Bake and serve

Fill the hollowed loaf of bread with the crab mixture.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together238 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crabs: Provide the main meat that forms the body of the filling.
Bread: Serves as the hollow shell that holds and shapes the filling while it bakes.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Bind the crab meat into a cohesive, creamy filling.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and keeping the filling moist.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, bread, egg, sauce, pepper, butter):

Parsleythe original
Capersfits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, bread, egg, sauce, pepper, butter. 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.