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Crab a LA Newberg

A crab dish simmered with sherry, salted, beaten eggs added, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Crab and meat work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Crab a LA Newberg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crab

  1. Pick the crab meat into pieces.

Cook

  1. Place the crab in a pan with sherry and simmer slowly.

  2. When nearly dry, add salt.

  3. Beat the eggs lightly and add them just before serving.

  4. Stir in the butter until melted.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Crab + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 dish and provides its flavour.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma as it simmers and reduces with the crab.
Eggs
Set gently when added off heat, thickening the dish and giving it a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel as it melts in.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs just before serving. Eggs set when heated, so if they are added too early or the pan is too hot they can scramble into curds instead of thickening the dish smoothly. Adding them last, off the heat, lets them thicken gently.

“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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