Dressed Crab
Pick the meat from the shell and claws, cut the solid parts into small pieces, dry the soft part with the addition of a spoonful of fine bread crumbs, mix all with a little oil, vinegar and mustard. Wash and dry the shells and serve the meat in them placed on a bed uf something green--lettuce, cress, young celery plants or parsley.
A cold assembly rather than a cooked dish: the recipe assumes you begin with a crab already boiled and cooled, which the original does not bother to say.
- Start with cooked crabNothing here cooks the meat, so the crab must be boiled or steamed and thoroughly chilled before picking. A live 2 lb crab yields roughly 6-8 oz of picked meat, enough to fill its own shell.
- "The solid parts" and "the soft part"Solid means the white body and claw meat; soft means the brown meat from inside the carapace, including the tomalley. The recipe treats the soft part first, with crumbs, then mixes all the meat with the dressing; separating white and brown meat is still the standard approach to picking a crab.
- Bread crumbs"Fine bread crumbs" may mean either fresh crumbs rubbed from a stale loaf or dried and sifted crumbs; the book does not say. Their job here is to dry and stiffen the brown meat into a spreadable paste; a spoonful per crab is what the recipe gives, and more will taste of bread.
- The dressingNo proportions are given. A workable reading of "a little oil, vinegar and mustard" is about 1 tablespoon oil, 1 to 2 teaspoons vinegar and half a teaspoon of mustard per crab, tasted as you go. The recipe mixes all the meat with it, though a light hand keeps the white meat in flakes.
- MustardThe recipe does not say whether prepared mustard or dry powder is meant; either works, but dry mustard needs a few minutes wet to lose its raw bite.
- Cleaning the shellScrub the carapace, discard the gills and the mouthparts, and trim or break away the thin lip around the underside so the cavity is even. The recipe asks only that the shells be washed and dried; scalding them helps them dry clean.
- Brown meat in quantityThe tomalley is the crab's hepatopancreas and concentrates cadmium and other contaminants from the water. It is fine as a component of a dressed crab; several public health advisories suggest not eating it in large amounts or on a regular basis.
- Yield and servingOne dressed crab is a first course for one, or a light lunch with bread and butter. Assemble it no more than a few hours ahead and keep it refrigerated, since neither the vinegar nor the mustard preserves anything.
Dressed crab is one of the plainest survivals of the British cold table. "Dressed" here carries its older sense of seasoned and arranged rather than sauced, and much of the point of the dish is presentation: the meat returned to a scrubbed carapace and set on greens. The division of white and brown meat, with crumbs to bind the soft part, is the traditional treatment and has changed little since; what dates the recipe is the assumption that a cook would have whole boiled crabs to hand and would need no instruction on picking them.