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Broiled Soft-Shell Crabs
Dip some soft-shell crabs into melted butter and season with pepper and salt. Then put them on the fire and broil them until the shells are slightly brown. As soon as they are done serve them hot with melted butter or lemon juice or with a lemon cut into quarters. Slices of hot dry toast may be laid under them
Oscar assumes a cook who already knows how to dress a crab and how to manage a live coal fire. Both assumptions need filling in, and the crabs themselves need to be bought with more care than anything else here.
- Buy them aliveSoft-shell crabs are blue crabs caught just after moulting, and they deteriorate very quickly once dead. Buy them kicking and have the fishmonger clean them the same day, or clean them yourself within hours.
- Cleaning, which the recipe omitsSnip off the face just behind the eyes, lift each pointed side of the shell and pull out the feathery gills, then turn the crab over and remove the apron flap. Pat dry before dipping in butter or the butter will slide off.
- "On the fire" means the broiler or grillIn a hotel kitchen of this period that would ordinarily have meant a hinged wire broiler over live coals. A domestic broiler set to high, with the rack four inches from the element, or a hot grill does the same work.
- TimingThree to four minutes a side is enough for a medium crab. They are done when the shell has turned pink-brown and the legs are crisp; past that the body meat dries out and the shell toughens instead of crisping.
- Butter and flare-upsMelted butter over open flame will drip and flame. Drain the crabs briefly after dipping, and if grilling, keep a cooler zone to move them to.
- Sizes and yieldSoft-shells are graded by width, from mediums (about 3½ to 4 inches) and hotels (about 4 to 4½) up through primes and jumbos to whales (over 5½). Two medium crabs per person as a main course, one as a first course.
- The toast is not a garnishDry toast under the crab catches the butter and juices that run out during broiling, which is the best part of the dish. Cut it to fit the crab and do not butter it beforehand.
Soft-shell crabs are a seasonal accident of biology turned into a luxury: blue crabs from the Chesapeake and the mid-Atlantic shed their shells to grow, and for a few hours afterward the whole animal is edible. Shipping them alive on ice by rail made them a fixture of grand New York hotel menus from the late nineteenth century, and the season — traditionally reckoned from the first full moon in May through summer — was announced on menus much as soft fruit was. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, published his compendium in 1896, when the hotel's kitchen was cooking for a clientele that expected shore delicacies inland and out of their own hands. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of the book: it is written for professional cooks who needed the seasoning and the accompaniment specified, not the technique.