Name: Dressed Crab
Ingredients: meat from crab shell and claws; 1 tablespoon fine bread crumbs; a little oil; a little vinegar; a little mustard; lettuce, cress, young celery plants, or parsley for serving

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 ↓

Dressed Crab

Ingredients

meat from crab shell and claws
1 tablespoon fine bread crumbs
a little oil
a little vinegar
a little mustard
lettuce, cress, young celery plants, or parsley for serving

Directions

Prepare the crab

Remove the meat from the crab shell and claws, cutting solid parts into small pieces.
Dry the soft part and mix it with bread crumbs, oil, vinegar, and mustard.
Wash and dry the crab shells.

Serve

Serve the crab meat in the shells on a bed of greens.

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + mustardtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together193 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together111 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 meat: Provides the main body and flavor of the dish.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and bind the crab meat into a cohesive mixture.
Oil: Adds richness and moistens the crab meat.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the crab.

Swap the lettuce

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

Horseradishfits about as well
Lettucethe original
Shallotfits about as well
Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, bread, vinegar, mustard. 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.