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Crab Salad

A salad of crab meat dressed with a butter, egg yolk, mustard, cayenne, salt, and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Crab Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain canned crabs or boil fresh crabs and pick the meat into pieces.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the egg yolks, mustard, Cayenne pepper, and salt.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix well and place on the stove, adding the vinegar; boil until thickened.

  2. Set aside to cool.

Serve

  1. Line a salad bowl with crisp lettuce, add the crab meat, and pour the dressing over just 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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the dressing as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the rich dressing and helps it thicken when boiled.
Crab meat
Provides the main protein and sweet, delicate flavor of the salad.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsified dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the dressing until thickened. Egg yolks thicken and set when heated, but overheating or curdling can make the dressing grainy. Cook gently, stirring, until it coats a spoon, then cool before serving.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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