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Dessert

Deviled Crab

Deviled Crab is a baked crab dish with crab meat mixed with cracker crumbs, egg, lemon, butter, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Deviled Crab

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pick the meat from the crabs and chop it.

  2. Mix the crab meat with cracker crumbs, egg, lemon juice, melted butter, salt, and cayenne.

  3. If the mixture is not moist enough, add a little cream or water.

Fill and bake

  1. Clean the crab shells thoroughly and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Place a slice of lemon on top of each filled shell.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together387 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the filling so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets when baked, holding it together.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, helping the filling stay tender.

The step that matters

Check the moisture before filling the shells. Cracker crumbs keep absorbing liquid, so a dry mixture crumbles and a wet one turns loose and soggy. Adding cream or water only when needed keeps the filling cohesive but spoonable.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, egg, butter, cream. 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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