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Crab, Minced
Pick out the meat from a medium-sized crab, as in the last recipe, being careful to leave out the unwholesome part near the head. Chop it, and a small-boned anchovy, together, and put them into a saucepan with a little salt and cayenne, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, two of sherry, a lump of butter about the size of a walnut, and two table-spoonfuls of bread-crumbs. Simmer gently for a few minutes. Then draw the saucepan back, and add very gradually the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with parsley. Probable cost, from 1s. to 3s., according to size. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian potted-crab savoury, thickened at the last moment with egg yolk. Two things decide whether it works: how thoroughly you clean the crab, and how gently you add the yolks.
- The yolks are the hinge"Draw the saucepan back" on a coal range meant shifting the pan away from the hottest part of the fire; on a modern hob, take it off the heat. Let the pan stop bubbling, then trickle the beaten yolks in while stirring constantly; the residual heat will thicken them. Put it back over a strong heat and you risk scrambled egg in vinegar.
- "The unwholesome part near the head"This is the feathery grey gills (the "dead man's fingers") and the stomach sac behind the mouth, both of which should be discarded. They are not poisonous, but they are gritty and spoil quickly. Keep the brown meat from the shell — it carries most of the flavour here.
- A medium-sized crabReckon on a brown crab of about 2 to 2 1/2 lb, which yields roughly 8 to 10 oz of picked white and brown meat together. Ready-picked crab meat in the same quantity works, though it is usually drier.
- A small-boned anchovyA whole salted anchovy, filleted. Two oil-packed anchovy fillets, or a scant teaspoon of anchovy paste, is the equivalent. Season with the salt only after the anchovy has dissolved into the mixture, or it will be too salty.
- A lump of butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. Victorian recipes routinely measure butter by comparison with a walnut or an egg rather than by weight.
- Two tablespoons of vinegarSharp by modern taste alongside only two tablespoons of sherry. The recipe does not say which vinegar; malt was the ordinary household vinegar of the period, but a mild wine vinegar, or half the quantity, gives a gentler result. The bread-crumbs are there to absorb the liquid, so do not reduce them.
- Simmer gently for a few minutesThree or four minutes is enough to warm the meat through and swell the crumbs. The crab is already cooked, and longer stewing turns it stringy.
- ServingThree or four portions as a savoury or first course, not a main dish. It is best spooned onto hot buttered toast or back into the cleaned shells and served at once, as it stiffens as it cools.
Minced crab of this kind belongs to the Victorian savoury course — a small, sharp, salty dish served after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, intended to finish the wine rather than fill anyone up. The combination of anchovy, cayenne, vinegar and sherry is the standard British seasoning formula of the period for shellfish and potted meats, and the anchovy is doing the work that a fish sauce or Worcestershire would do in a later recipe. The "Probable cost / Sufficient for" format suggests a book of the Cassell's type, aimed at households buying by the shilling: 1s. to 3s. for a crab in the 1870s and 1880s reflects how much size and season affected the fishmonger's slab. The instruction about the part "near the head" recurs in crab recipes of the century, usually with the same vagueness — the gills and stomach were often said to be actively poisonous rather than merely unpleasant, though this seems to have been more a matter of inherited caution than documented belief.