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Deviled Crab

A crab dish with butter, cream, eggs, flour, and cracker crumbs, baked in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the meat from the boiled crab.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the cream and bring to a boil.

  4. Chop the egg whites and mix them with the crab meat.

  5. Add the mixture to the cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the cracker crumbs with the egg yolks.

  2. Sprinkle the crumb and yolk mixture on top.

  3. Bake in crab shells at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Crab + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Crab
Provides the main meat and flavor of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Cream
Forms the moist base of the sauce that binds the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and softness to the filling, with yolks giving richness to the topping.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they bake.

The step that matters

Bring the cream to a boil after adding the flour. Flour must be stirred into the melted butter and cooked smoothly before the cream goes in, or it can form lumps. Bringing the sauce to a boil fully thickens the starch so the filling holds together rather than running in the shell.

“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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