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Oyster Crabs and White-Bait
Mix equal quantities of oyster crabs and white-bait, both of which have been previously washed, drained and rolled in flour, and fry in deep fat. Sauce tartare is almost invariably served with all crab dishes. T
A two-sentence recipe that assumes a cook who already knows how to run a fat kettle. The only real work is sourcing the two ingredients, both of which have become far harder to find than they were in 1911.
- Oyster crabsPinnotheres ostreum, the pea-sized soft crab that lives inside a live oyster. They were once a byproduct of commercial shucking houses and sold by the pint; today they turn up only occasionally at oyster bars or from a shucker who saves them for you. There is no substitute of similar texture.
- White-baitNot a species but a category: any fry or very small silvery fish, eaten whole, head, bones and all. In the period this meant young herring or sprat in England and silversides or anchovy fry in the United States. Fresh or frozen whole smelt, sand eel or European anchovy are the closest current options; buy fish no longer than two or three inches so they stay tender.
- SourcingWhitebait fisheries are now regulated in several countries, and the New Zealand whitebait species in particular are of conservation concern. Check what your fishmonger is actually selling and where it came from before buying.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "deep fat" and gives no temperature; for fish and crabs this small, modern deep-frying practice would put it around 375F. Anything cooler and the flour coating soaks; anything much hotter and the crabs scorch before the whitebait firm up. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge. Both ingredients hold water in their crevices, and wet fish in hot fat spits violently and steams the coating loose. Drain on a towel until the surface is genuinely dry, then flour just before frying, not in advance.
- TimingNo time is given because there is barely any. At 375F both are done in 60 to 90 seconds, when the flour is pale gold and the whitebait have stiffened. Longer and the crabs turn to grit.
- FlourThe recipe says only that both are rolled in flour, with no mention of seasoning; plain flour with salt and a little cayenne or white pepper is a modern addition. A shallow bowl and a sieve to shake off excess works better than a bag.
- Sauce tartareThe period version is mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins, parsley and a little onion or shallot, sharpened with vinegar. Make it before you start frying, since the fish must go to the table straight from the fat.
- YieldFigure a generous half cup of the mixture per person as a first course, served heaped with lemon wedges. It does not reheat.
Both of these were luxuries of proximity rather than price: they had to be eaten within hours of coming out of the water, which made them city delicacies in the oyster ports of the eastern seaboard and in London, where whitebait dinners at Greenwich were a fixture of the Victorian political calendar. Oyster crabs reached American tables largely because the great late-nineteenth-century oyster trade generated them in quantity as a free byproduct of shucking, and hotel and club kitchens in New York and Philadelphia made a specialty of frying them; Diamond Jim Brady's fondness for them is part of the standard lore of the period, though the anecdotes are traditional rather than documented. That The Butterick Cook Book (1911) prints the dish so tersely, with no quantities and no explanation of what an oyster crab is, tells you the editors expected their readers to recognize a restaurant dish they might reproduce at home. Within a few decades the collapse of the eastern oyster beds had made it a rarity, which is roughly where it remains.