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Devilled Crabs (Yolks eggs cup chopped crab)
Yolks 2 eggs 1 cup chopped crab meat 1/4 cup mushrooms, finely chopped 2 tablespoons Sherry wine 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 2/3 cup White Stock rooms. 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley Salt and pepper Make a sauce of butter, flour, and stock; add yolks of eggs, seasonings (except parsley), crab meat, and mush- Cook three minutes, add parsley, and cool mixture.
Wash and trim crab shells, fill rounding with mixture, sprinkle with stale bread crumbs mixed with a small quantity of melted butter. Crease on top with a case knife, having three lines parallel with each other across shell and three short lines branching from outside parallel lines. Bake until crumbs are brown. 1 quart scallops 1/3 cup butter
A classic stuffed-shell entrée from the Boston Cooking School, built on a thick velouté bound with egg yolks. The mixture must be fully cooled before it goes into the shells or it will slump and weep butter in the oven.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F on the upper rack; the filling is already cooked, so you are only browning crumbs, which takes 10-15 minutes.
- White StockThe book's white stock is a mild veal or chicken stock, unbrowned. Any light chicken stock works; avoid dark or heavily reduced stock, which will muddy the sauce.
- Egg yolksBeat the yolks with a little of the hot sauce before returning them to the pan, then keep the pan below a simmer. Boiling after the yolks go in will curdle the binding.
- The three minutesThree minutes over low heat is enough to thicken and set the yolks. Longer will toughen the crab, which needs no cooking at all if you are using picked meat.
- Crab shellsCleaned crab backs are no longer standard kitchen stock. Scrub and boil shells from the crabs you picked, or use small ceramic ramekins or scallop shells; the recipe gives no yield, but a cup of crab meat with this quantity of sauce will fill perhaps four small shells.
- Crumbs"Stale bread crumbs" means crumbs from day-old bread, coarser than commercial fine crumbs. Panko will brown well, though its flakier texture is not identical.
- The scoringThe case-knife creasing is decorative only, three parallel lines with three short lines branching from them, pressed into the crumb top with the flat blade of a table knife. It has no effect on the dish and can be skipped.
- SherryThe sherry appears in the ingredient list but the method never says when to add it; add it with the other seasonings. Use a dry or medium sherry, not cooking sherry, which is salted.
Devilled crab in this period meant crab meat bound in a rich sauce, returned to the shell and browned, rather than anything fiery; "devilled" appears by this date to have loosened from its older sense of hot mustard and cayenne toward meaning simply seasoned and crumbed. Rock crab was abundant along the New England coast, and the shells came free with the meat.