Dressed Crab
1 good sized heavy crab 6 tablespoonfuls Crisco 2 tablespoonfuls breadcrumbs 3 tablespoonfuls olive oil 2 tablespoonfuls vinegar 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley Crisp lettuce leaves Salt and pepper to taste If possible choose a crab with large claws. Boil crab in boiling salted water for thirty minutes, take up and break off large and small claws. Lay crab on its back, pull back the flap under its body, pull it right out and commence to remove flesh from shell. Take care that the little bag near head, usually full of sand, is taken out. Throw away all bone and finny pieces. The flesh is of two kinds, some firm and white, rest soft and dark. Separate former into little shreds with a fork, also the white meat from claws, which must be cracked in order to obtain it. Mix dark soft substance with crumbs, add oil, vinegar, and seasonings to taste. Toss shredded white meat also in a little seasoning, but keep the two kinds separate. When shell is empty wash and dry well. Fill shell with the two mixtures, arranging them alternately, so that they appear in dark and white stripes. Have it heaped a little higher in center. Decorate meat with lines of finely chopped parsley, and force the Crisco round edge with a forcing bag and tube. Place crab on some crisp lettuce leaves. Arrange some of the small claws in a circle round shell.
A straightforward cold crab salad served in its own shell, from one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks — which explains the shortening piped around the rim. A few points on cleaning, timing, and what to do about that border.
- The Crisco borderThe piped shortening around the shell edge is advertising, not cooking: cold hydrogenated fat has no flavour and sets waxy on the tongue. Pipe softened butter, thick mayonnaise, or omit the border entirely and edge the shell with parsley.
- Boiling timeThirty minutes is long by modern standards, and the recipe gives no weight to go by. A 2 lb crab needs roughly 15-20 minutes from the moment the water returns to the boil; longer and the white meat turns fibrous and dry.
- What to discardThe "little bag near the head" is the stomach sac, just behind the mouthparts. Also pull off and throw out the grey feathered gills (dead man's fingers) along each side of the body, and the hard mouthparts.
- Brown meatThe "soft and dark" substance is the brown meat from the carapace, rich and slightly bitter. Two tablespoons of breadcrumbs is enough to bind it into a spreadable paste; add them gradually, since the volume of brown meat varies a great deal between crabs.
- The dressing is sharpThree parts oil to two parts vinegar is much more acidic than a modern vinaigrette. Start with a teaspoon of vinegar in the brown meat, taste, and add more — the brown meat is already assertive and drowns easily.
- Forcing bag and tubeA piping bag and nozzle. Any star tube works for the border.
- Cleaning the shellSnap away the thin, brittle edge of the carapace along the natural line before washing, so the shell makes a neat oval bowl. Scrub it, scald it, and dry it thoroughly or the dressing weeps.
- YieldOne large crab dressed this way serves two as a first course, or one as a light lunch. Serve cold, the same day the crab is cooked.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks to use a new product, in this case Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening Procter & Gamble introduced in 1911. That accounts for the strangest instruction here — six tablespoons of shortening piped decoratively around a cold crab. The dish itself is older and thoroughly English: crab dressed in its shell, with the white and brown meat kept separate and banded, appears in Victorian household manuals and remains standard practice in British seaside kitchens today. The insistence on "a crab with large claws" has its uses, since claw meat is the firmest and whitest part and the visual contrast depends on having enough of it.