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Fricassee of Soft-shell Crabs

A creamy soup-like dish made with soft-shell crabs, onion, parsley, butter, flour, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricassee of Soft-shell Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and stir until the onion is soft and browned.

  3. Add the browned flour and chopped parsley and stir for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Wash the crabs and chop off the claws while they are alive.

  2. Add the crabs to the gravy and let them simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Transfer the crabs to a dish and pour the gravy over them.

  4. Serve with nicely boiled rice.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 meat that is cooked through in the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the boiling water into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavour and adds richness to the gravy.
Chopped onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the browned flour. Pouring the water in all at once and stirring well keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the gravy thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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