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Crab Soup
Open some small uncooked crabs, and remove the deadman's fingers and sandbags. Cut the crabs in two, parboil and extract the meat from the claws, and remove the fat from the back of the shells. Place some ripe tomatoes in a basin, scald and skin them, and squeeze the pulp through a colander, keeping back the seeds. Pour boiling water over the seeds and juice of the tomatoes and strain. Put in a saucepan one clove of garlic, one onion, one tablespoonful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of lard, and the pulp of the tomatoes and let it stew a short time. Put the meat from the claws of the crab, and lastly the fat into the soup, season with sweet marjoram, parsley, lemon, salt, and black and red pepper. Pour in the water in which the seeds were scalded, simmer for one hour and thicken with breadcrumbs.
A tomato-based crab soup with no measurements for the main ingredient and a set of butchering terms that have largely fallen out of use. The hinge is timing: the crab meat should not spend an hour in the pot.
- Deadman's fingers and sandbagsThe "fingers" are the feathery grey gills along either side of the body; the "sandbag" is the stomach sac behind the eyes. Both are pulled out and discarded once the top shell is lifted, along with the apron on the underside.
- The fatThe soft yellow-brown matter clinging inside the back shell is the hepatopancreas, sold as crab "mustard" or tomalley. It carries most of the flavour here, but it also concentrates contaminants, and current state advisories in the Chesapeake and elsewhere recommend limiting or avoiding it; the soup works without it.
- How many crabsOscar says only "some small uncooked crabs." For four servings, reckon on six to eight live blue crabs, which will yield roughly half a pound of picked meat.
- Parboil means barelyA few minutes in boiling water is enough to loosen the meat from the claws and body. Longer and the meat toughens before it ever reaches the soup.
- Add the meat lateAs written, the claw meat and the fat go in before the hour's simmer. If you would rather the crab not spend that long in the pot, build and simmer the tomato base first, then stir in the picked meat and the fat in the last five minutes so it heats through without shredding.
- Red pepperIn a 1896 American kitchen this means cayenne, not paprika or a fresh chilli. Use it sparingly at first; the soup is thin and takes seasoning quickly.
- LiquidThe tomato pulp and the water scalded over the seeds and juice are the only liquids here, and they will not amount to much. Have a quart of light stock or water alongside and thin the pot as it reduces.
- ThickeningA quarter to a half cup of dry breadcrumbs stirred in at the end will give body without pastiness. Add them gradually and let the soup stand a few minutes, as crumbs keep swelling.
- LemonListed among the seasonings, so most likely juice rather than slices. Add it off the heat, after the crab is in, so the brightness survives.
Oscar Tschirky was never a chef at the Waldorf; he was the maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 Cook Book gathered recipes from the hotel's kitchens and from his own broad reading. Crab soup of this kind sat at a crossroads of American regional cooking: blue crabs came up to New York markets from Chesapeake and New Jersey waters, while the garlic, lard, cayenne and tomato pulp point toward the Creole and Italian-American kitchens rather than the French repertoire that dominated the rest of the hotel's menus. The use of lard alongside butter is a good period marker; it was still an ordinary cooking fat in a first-class hotel and would largely disappear from such recipes within a generation. Thickening with breadcrumbs rather than roux or cream is older still, a technique traceable to medieval European practice and long outlasted in soups and sauces where a little body was wanted without richness.