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Creamed Crabs in Fontage Cups
Substitute two cups crab meat cut in fine pieces for lobster meat and proceed as for Creamed Lobster.
A one-line variation that assumes you have the book's Creamed Lobster and its fontage cups in front of you. The whole job is a white sauce, warmed shellfish, and a batter case to hold it.
- It is a cross-reference, not a standalone recipeYou need the book's Creamed Lobster, presumably a butter-and-flour white sauce with the shellfish folded in at the end; the seasonings are not given here. Nothing on this page changes but the meat.
- Fontage cupsFontage cups are thin pancake-batter cases baked in small cup-shaped tins or dariole moulds, closer to a crepe shell than a pastry shell. Small ramekins, muffin cups or brioche tins lined with a thin batter give the same result; puff-pastry vol-au-vent cases or toast cups are a modern substitute.
- Two cups of crab meatAbout 10 to 12 oz picked meat; how much whole cooked crab that takes depends heavily on the species. Lump or backfin is right, and the recipe says plainly to cut it fine.
- Warm it, do not cook itThe crab is already cooked. Fold it into the finished sauce off direct heat and bring it back just to steaming. Held at a simmer it turns stringy and gives up water that thins the sauce.
- Pasteurized crab needs drainingRefrigerated tubs of pasteurized crab carry a good deal of liquid. Drain and pat dry, or make the sauce a little thicker than you would for lobster, which sheds less.
- SeasoningCrab is milder and sweeter than lobster and takes more assertive seasoning: a full measure of salt, white pepper, a squeeze of lemon, and a dash of cayenne or mace.
- Fill at the last minuteBatter cases soften within minutes of being filled. Bake or crisp them ahead, keep them dry and warm, and spoon in the creamed crab as it goes to the table.
- YieldTwo cups of crab fills roughly six to eight small cups; entree here carries the older sense of a lighter dish served between heavier ones.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, is a full general cookbook rather than a chocolate pamphlet, and its Entrées chapter is arranged with a base preparation given once, then a run of one-line variations built on it. Creamed shellfish appears in a small edible case, a form related to the French timbale and croustade, and fontage cups — a thin batter baked into moulded shells — offered an alternative that called for no pastry work. That crab could stand in for lobster at all is worth noting; picked crab meat was sold by the pound in coastal markets.