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Fried Soft-shell Crabs
Prepare the crabs as directed above. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper, roll them in beaten egg, then in fine bread crumbs, again in egg and in the crumbs, and fry in deep, hot fat. Garnish with watercress and thin slices of lemon.
A plain double-breaded deep fry that depends almost entirely on the crabs being fresh and the fat being hot enough. The recipe assumes you have already cleaned them following the preceding entry in the book.
- Cleaning the crabsThe "as directed above" step means snipping off the face just behind the eyes, lifting each side of the shell to pull out the feathery gills, and removing the apron on the underside. Buy them alive or cleaned that day; a soft-shell crab that has been dead for any length of time is not worth cooking.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no figure, only "deep, hot fat." Modern practice for this is roughly 350-375F. Too cool and the double coating soaks and slides off; too hot and the crumbs colour before the crab is done.
- TimingRoughly three to four minutes for a medium crab, turning once if they are not fully submerged. They are done when the shell has gone reddish and the legs are rigid.
- The double coatEgg, crumbs, egg, crumbs. The likely reason is that soft-shells carry a lot of water and a single coating tends to loosen in the fat; letting the breaded crabs rest before frying helps the layers set.
- SpatterCrabs pop in hot fat because of the moisture trapped inside the body. Pat them thoroughly dry before the first egg wash and lower them in with tongs, away from you.
- Crumbs"Fine bread crumbs" in this period means dried, sieved crumbs from stale bread, not the coarse panko sold today. Either works; the dried fine crumb gives the smoother, more even crust the recipe expects.
- CayenneA pinch mixed into the crumbs distributes better than sprinkling it on the wet crab, where it tends to sit in patches.
- YieldThe original gives no count. Figure two crabs per person as a main course, one as a first course, and fry in batches of no more than three so the fat holds its heat.
Soft-shell crabs are blue crabs caught in the few hours after moulting, before the new shell hardens, and the American fishery for them developed around the Chesapeake in the nineteenth century, where crabs were held in floating pens and watched for the moult. Rail shipment in ice had made them a familiar item on East Coast hotel and restaurant menus by the closing decades of the century. The whole-crab presentation, legs and all, was part of the appeal, and watercress and lemon were a common garnish for fried fish and shellfish of the period.