Crab Soup
6 hard-shelled crabs 2 tablespoons butter 3 cups White Stock III 2 tablespoons flour ⅔ cup stale bread crumbs 1 slice onion 1 sprig parsley 1 cup cream
The page gives the ingredient list only; the method has to be reconstructed from the way Farmer builds every other cream soup in the section. Read it as a crab bisque: flavoured stock, a butter-and-flour thickening, crab meat and crumbs, cream last.
- The crabsHard-shelled crabs are boiled and picked; six will yield roughly 1 to 1½ cups of meat, including the fat from under the shell, which carries much of the flavour. Picked crab meat from the fish counter substitutes; measure to about 1½ cups rather than buying by weight.
- White Stock IIIA numbered cross-reference to another page in the book; Farmer's white stocks are pale, unbrowned and mildly seasoned, typically built on veal and/or fowl. Any light chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will bully the crab.
- Butter and flourTwo tablespoons of each is a standard white roux for three cups of liquid. Cook it a minute or two without colouring before the stock goes in, or the soup tastes of raw flour.
- The bread crumbsStale crumbs here are a thickener and a body-builder, not a garnish. Simmer them in the stock with the onion and parsley until they dissolve, then strain or purée; modern dried crumbs from a canister are too fine and too salty, so use crumbs torn from day-old bread.
- Onion and parsleyA single slice of onion and one sprig is an infusion, not a mirepoix. They go into the hot stock, steep, and come out — the point is scent, not sweetness.
- The creamAdd it at the end and bring the soup only to steaming. Cream held at a boil in a salty base can separate, and the crab meat itself toughens with extended heat — two or three minutes of gentle warming is enough.
- SeasoningThe list gives none. Salt to taste at the end. White pepper, a scrape of nutmeg or a spoonful of sherry are all plausible additions to a soup of this type, but the page does not call for them.
- YieldBetween four and five cups of finished soup — four small first-course servings, or two as a main.
Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) placed shellfish soups in the same chapter as consommés and purées of vegetable. The dish belongs to the Anglo-American bisque family: a light stock thickened with roux and bread, enriched with cream, and named for its principal shellfish. Farmer's habit of cross-referencing stocks by number — White Stock III rather than a full recipe repeated — reflects the same instinct as her wider practice; she is generally credited with pushing American cookbooks toward level measurements and standardised components, and a numbered stock is that instinct applied to the soup pot. The bread-crumb thickening is older than the roux beside it, a survival from a time before flour-and-butter liaisons were routine in home kitchens.