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Deviled Crab

Deviled Crab is a creamy crab filling topped with buttered crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Deviled Crab

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until it forms a cream sauce.

Season and combine

  1. Stir in the mushroom sauce, paprika, and Tabasco sauce.

  2. Add the crab meat and season with salt.

  3. Incorporate the finely chopped mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then add the chopped parsley.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into crab shells, top with buttered crumbs.

  2. Brown in the oven and serve hot.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Crab + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the dish its flavour.
Milk
Forms the cream sauce with the roux, giving the filling a smooth, moist texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a cream sauce as part of the roux.
Egg
Sets when heated, helping bind the filling together.
Mushroom sauce
Adds savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the parsley. Adding the beaten egg off the heat and then letting the mixture cool keeps the egg from scrambling in the hot sauce, so the filling stays smooth and binds evenly when baked.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, milk, mushroom, sauce, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, milk, mushroom, sauce, egg. 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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