Home › Chafing-Dish Dainties › Oyster Crabs
Oyster Crabs
INGREDIENTS.
1 pint of oyster crabs.
1 teaspoonful of lemon 1 tablespoonful of butter. juice. 1½ an onion, sliced.
1 tablespoonful of chopped 1 tablespoonful of flour. parsley.
1 cup of white stock.
I yolk of egg.
Salt and pepper.
Method. - Melt the butter in the blazer, add the onion, and let cook until a light-brown color; add the flour and mix until smooth; add the stock and stir until it thickens. Add the crab meat, lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper. Beat the yolk of the egg and add two or three spoonfuls of the sauce to it; mix well, add to the ingredients in the blazer, stir constantly, and serve as soon as heated.
Crabs à la Creole.
INGREDIENTS.
I green pepper, chopped fine.
I small onion, chopped fine.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 clove of garlic, chopped 1 cup of tomatoes.
1 cup of crab meat. fine.
Pepper and salt.
Method. - Put the butter in the blazer; when melted, add the garlic, onion, salt, pepper and tomatoes, and let cook ten minutes; add the crab meat (fresh or canned). Serve when hot on sip pets of toast.
A chafing-dish sauce built on a blond roux and finished with an egg yolk, from the era when the blazer pan sat over a spirit lamp at the table. Two things govern it: the delicacy of the crabs and the fragility of the liaison.
- The blazerThe blazer is the shallow upper pan of a chafing dish, used directly over the flame. A wide, heavy-bottomed skillet or a sauté pan on low heat does the same work; keep the heat gentle throughout.
- Oyster crabsThese are Pinnotheres ostreum (now often placed as Zaops ostreus), the pea-sized crabs that live inside living oysters, once a byproduct of the shucking houses and sold by the pint. They are hard to find today outside a few East Coast oyster dealers. Picked lump crabmeat, or small peeled shrimp cut once, stands in; measure the pint by volume rather than converting it to a weight.
- White stockA light unbrowned stock of veal or chicken. Low-sodium chicken stock is the practical equivalent; season at the end, since the sauce reduces slightly.
- The egg yolkThis is the hinge. Once the yolk goes in, the sauce must not simmer or it will curdle into threads. Temper it with two or three spoonfuls of hot sauce as directed, return it off the flame, and bring it back only to steaming.
- Cooking the crabsWhole oyster crabs need barely a minute in the hot sauce; picked crabmeat needs only to warm through. Anything longer and the meat shreds and toughens.
- Browning the onion"Light-brown color" in a tablespoon of butter takes roughly 5-8 minutes over moderate heat. The recipe leaves the sliced onion in; lift the slices out before the flour goes in if you want a smoother sauce.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast, cut from crustless bread. Three or four per serving, arranged to catch the sauce.
- YieldNeither dish is stated. Each serves two generously as a supper dish, or four as a first course.
Oyster crabs were a genuine luxury of the American Atlantic coast in the late nineteenth century: soft, translucent, no bigger than a fingernail, and gathered a few at a time from the mantle cavity of shucked oysters. Their appearance here, alongside a Creole crab of green pepper, garlic and tomato, marks this as a book of the chafing-dish vogue that ran from roughly the 1890s into the 1910s, when hostesses cooked small rich dishes at the table over a spirit lamp for late suppers and after-theatre parties. The equipment favoured exactly this kind of recipe: one pan, a few minutes, an expensive ingredient in a small quantity, and a sauce finished with egg yolk in front of the guests.