Skip to main content
Main

Buttered Crab, or Lobster

A buttery crab or lobster dish flavored with mustard, vinegar, cayenne, nutmeg, and optional bread crumbs or meat jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Buttered Crab, or Lobster

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crab mixture

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

  2. Heat slowly over low heat until warmed through.

  3. Mix in mustard, vinegar, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Add grated nutmeg and stir until well combined.

Serve

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

  2. For added flavor, include a spoonful of meat jelly.

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

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Mustard + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab or lobster flesh
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its sweet, savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the flesh and carrying flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and juices into a light, cohesive sauce.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Heat slowly over low heat until warmed through. Flour thickens sauces only when heated gently; high heat can scorch the butter and milk solids and make the crab tough and dry, so warm it gradually and keep it from boiling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipes