Crabs in Red Peppers

The ingredient list has been mangled by the original's column layout, and the quantities for butter, flour and crab meat never made it onto the page at all. Read it as a method rather than a formula.

• That first lineIt most likely reads as "1 tablespoon onion" followed by a list of seasonings to taste: salt, pepper, paprika, mustard, cayenne, nutmeg. The line break has probably run the onion into the salt; how the onion was to be cut is not stated.
• Missing quantitiesFor 1 cup cream, 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour gives the standard medium white sauce; go heavier if you want it stiff enough to hold in a pepper shell. Reckon on about 1 lb (2 cups) crab meat for four large peppers, though the page gives no figure.
• Parboiling the peppersHalve them lengthwise, seed them, and boil 4 to 5 minutes only. They should still hold their shape; fully softened peppers collapse under the filling.
• Oven heatNone is given. A hot oven, 400F, for 15 to 20 minutes is right, since everything in the dish is already cooked and you are only browning crumbs and heating through.
• Crab meatThe book does not say what form it expects, and picked fresh meat is the likeliest. Refrigerated pasteurized lump crab is the closest equivalent; drain it well and fold it in at the end so the lumps stay whole. Canned crab is wetter and will thin the sauce.
• Nutmeg and mustardBoth are period markers in a cream sauce and both work, but keep them light: a scrape of nutmeg and a quarter teaspoon of dry mustard for a cup of sauce. Cayenne at the same time is easy to overdo.
• The crumbs"Soft bread crumbs" means fresh crumbs torn from a loaf, not dry packaged ones. Toss them with melted butter before they go on, or they scorch in patches rather than browning evenly.
• YieldNot stated. On the quantities suggested above, four filled halves (two whole peppers), which will serve two as a light main course or four as a first course.