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Sauce for Crabs
Slightly warm two or three ounces of butter, and beat until creamy with a wooden spoon, then mix with it one teaspoonful of made mustard, one tablespoonful of vinegar, and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Season to taste with a small quantity of cayenne pepper and salt, and stir it over the fire until thickened, but do not let it boil or the eggs will curdle. It is then ready for serving.
This is a warm mustard-butter emulsion in the hollandaise family, thickened by egg yolk rather than by reduction. The whole recipe hinges on heat control.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerYolks begin to thicken from about 150F and set not far above 160F, scrambling soon after. Work in a bowl over barely steaming water, or in a heavy pan off and on the heat, and pull it the moment it coats the spoon.
- Butter quantityTwo or three ounces is 4 to 6 tablespoons, or half to three-quarters of a stick. Take the larger amount for a richer, looser sauce.
- "Made mustard"Mustard already mixed to a paste, not dry mustard powder. In this period that could mean either a bought paste or powder freshly mixed with water or vinegar.
- "Over the fire"A range top. On gas or electric, the lowest setting plus a water bath gives the control that a coal range's cooler edges once provided.
- VinegarA tablespoon of plain white wine or cider vinegar suits the sauce; malt or distilled vinegar will dominate it.
- If it breaksTake it off the heat at the first sign of graininess and beat in a teaspoon of cold water, or whisk the mixture into a fresh yolk in a clean bowl. Once it has fully scrambled it is past saving.
- Yield and servingRoughly half a cup, enough for two to four servings of hot or cold crab. Serve it warm, not hot, and do not attempt to hold or reheat it.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his cook book in 1896, when hotel cookery in New York was essentially French technique applied to American produce. This sauce is a case in point: it is a hollandaise in structure, with the classic lemon replaced by vinegar and sharpened with prepared mustard, a pairing often said to have long been associated with crab on both sides of the Atlantic and still commonly linked with Maryland and the Chesapeake. Hard-shell crab is generally thought to have been cheap and plentiful in Northeastern markets then, and a hotel kitchen would have run through quantities of it in salads, on toast and in the shell.