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Hot Crab, or Lobster

A simple crab or lobster dish sautéed with butter, flour, vinegar, cayenne, nutmeg, and optional bread crumbs or meat jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hot Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab

  1. In a saucepan, combine the crab or lobster flesh with the butter rolled in flour.

  2. Heat the mixture slowly over a gentle fire.

  3. Add the vinegar and cayenne pepper, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Grate in a little nutmeg and heat until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately in the shell or in scallop shells, plain or topped with bread crumbs.

  2. For added flavor, mix in meat jelly before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster flesh
Provides the main body and sweet, savory flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the flavors across the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, sweet flavor of the seafood.

The step that matters

Heating slowly over a gentle fire. Shellfish proteins toughen and turn rubbery when overheated, and the flour-thickened butter can scorch or separate. Gentle heat keeps the flesh tender and the mixture smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, bread, meat):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, bread, meat. 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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