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Devilbd Crabs

A baked crab dish with a creamy, spiced filling made from crab meat, eggs, butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Devilbd Crabs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crab

  1. Boil the crabs in salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. Cool the crabs.

  3. Pick out the crab meat.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, red pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and salt.

  2. Add the crab meat and chopped celery to the mixture.

  3. In a saucepan, combine flour, cornstarch, butter, white pepper, cayenne, salt, eggs, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Heat the cream in a separate pot until just boiling.

  5. Quickly stir the hot cream into the crab mixture to avoid lumps.

Fill, bake and serve

  1. Wash and dry the crab shells thoroughly.

  2. Fill the shells with the crab mixture.

  3. Beat the egg yolk.

  4. Smooth the beaten yolk over the filled shells.

  5. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve hot or cold, garnished with parsley.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and enrich it, helping it set into a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a tender mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and smooth.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together rather than running out.
Cornstarch
Adds thickening power, giving a smooth, stable set to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the hot cream to the crab mixture. Pouring hot cream in quickly and stirring constantly keeps the thickening starches and egg dispersed evenly, which prevents lumps and curdling in the filling.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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