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Deviled Crabs

Deviled Crabs are crab meat stuffed in shells with a creamy mixture of cream, flour, butter, egg yolks, nutmeg, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and pick the crab

  1. Boil crabs in warm water with salt for 45 minutes.

  2. Break claws of the cooked crabs. Separate shells from the claws.

  3. Remove spongy fingers and stomach from the crabs. Pick out all the crab meat.

Make the filling

  1. In a double boiler, scald the cream.

  2. Mix flour and butter into a cream. Stir the mixture into the scalded cream.

  3. Add mashed egg yolks, grated nutmeg, and chopped parsley to the mixture. Fold in the crab meat.

  4. Season the mixture with pepper and salt. If the mixture is not creamy, add more cream.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the crab shells with the mixture. Brush the filled shells with beaten egg.

  2. Top the shells with bread crumbs. Serve with lemon slices.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs
Provide the main body of meat that forms the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a creamy, spoonable texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream with butter so the filling holds together rather than running.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and works with flour to form the thickening base.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and cream gently over a double boiler. Heating too fast or leaving lumps leaves a grainy, uneven filling that will not hold its shape when baked.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

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