Crab Gumbo
Prepare same as chicken gumbo, substituting one quart crab meat for chicken and using the crab liquor. 6 cups chicken stock 1/4 cup onion
This is a cross-reference rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the book's chicken gumbo in front of you and only tells you what to swap. The two stray measurements printed at the end are the chicken gumbo's stock and onion quantities, repeated here for convenience.
- What the entry actually gives youSix cups of chicken stock, a quarter cup of onion, and a quart of crab meat with its liquor. Everything else comes from the parent chicken gumbo recipe, so read that first.
- A quart of crab meatMeasured by volume, that is roughly 1 1/2 lb of picked meat, which is a generous amount for six cups of stock. Lump or backfin behaves best; claw meat is cheaper and holds up better to heat.
- Crab liquorThe liquid released when crabs are steamed or picked, or the packing liquid in a container of fresh crab. It is salty and strongly flavoured, so add it early and season at the very end. If your crab comes drained, a little clam juice or shrimp stock stands in.
- Add the crab lastThis is the hinge. Crab meat is already cooked and turns stringy and flat if simmered. Build and season the gumbo fully, then fold the meat in off direct heat and give it two or three minutes to warm through.
- If the base uses fileFile powder must never boil, or the soup goes stringy and ropy. Take the pot off the heat before stirring it in, and reheat leftovers gently for the same reason.
- If the base uses okraOkra needs the opposite treatment — cook it in the fat until the slippery quality cooks off before the stock goes in, otherwise the gumbo is gluey.
- YieldSix cups of stock plus a quart of crab and the vegetables makes something over two quarts.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and published in 1907 by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer — a house cookbook of the sort candy and flour firms issued to keep their names in the kitchen, though its soup and meat chapters are conventional general cookery. Gumbo had by then travelled well out of Louisiana and into northern books, where it often appears as a thickened, okra- or file-bound soup on a chicken stock base. Presenting the crab version as a one-line substitution on the chicken recipe is characteristic of the period's cookbook economy: variations were printed as deltas to save type.