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To Devil Hard Crabs
Take them while alive, put them in very little water and steam them till perfectly done and brown, set them away till cold, take all out of the shell. Mix with eggs, bread crumbs, butter, and pepper. Either put back in the top shell and bake, or bake in pans.--Mrs. J. C.
A sketch rather than a recipe: no quantities, no oven temperature, and a title that promises more heat than the ingredient list delivers. What follows fills the gaps a competent cook will notice.
- The hinge: keep the crabs alive until they hit the steamBlue crabs spoil very quickly once dead, which is why the instruction opens with "while alive." Buy them lively, keep them cold and damp under wet newspaper, and cook them the day you get them; a crab that is dead and limp at the market should be left there.
- Steaming, and what "brown" meansSteaming, and what "brown" may mean -- An inch or two of water in a covered pot, crabs on a rack above it, 20-25 minutes for large crabs until the shells go orange-red. "Brown" is unexplained here; it most likely refers to the change in the cooked shell rather than to any browning of the meat, but the recipe does not say.
- Picking and cleaningPull off the apron and top shell, discard the feathery gills and the stomach sac behind the eyes, then pick the body and claws. A dozen large crabs yields roughly a pound of meat, enough for six to eight stuffed shells.
- Using the top shellsScrub and boil the backs before filling them, or use ceramic crab shells or ramekins. The deeper top shells hold a filling best; shallow ones from smaller crabs may not hold much.
- Proportions the recipe omitsFor a pound of picked meat, figure two eggs, about a cup of fresh soft bread crumbs, and three to four tablespoons of melted butter, with more crumbs reserved for the top. Bind lightly; too much crumb turns it into stuffing with crab in it.
- Where the "devil" wentDeviled means peppery, and Mrs. J. C. mentions only pepper. Many deviled-crab recipes add dry mustard, cayenne, a little Worcestershire or lemon; without them the dish is simply baked crab.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 375F for 20-25 minutes, until set and browned on top; a slightly lower oven works if you allow a little longer.
- SaltNone is called for, and crab needs some. Season the mixture before it goes into the shells; note that it contains raw egg, so do not taste it uncooked.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of these initialed, quantity-free receipts written by one experienced cook for another. Deviled crab belongs to the Chesapeake, where the blue crab was cheap and abundant through the warm months; serving the seasoned meat back in its own scrubbed top shell is a long-standing practice in the region. "To devil" in English cookery had meant to season sharply with pepper, mustard and cayenne since at least the early nineteenth century, applied to bones, kidneys and other leftovers reheated hot enough to sting. That this version calls only for pepper is a reminder of how much these books left to the cook's own hand.