No. 1003

Hard Shell Crabs, Stuffed, Carolina Style

Crabes Durs Farcis a la Caroline

Fry colorless in butter some finely chopped onions; sprinkle over a little rice flour, fry again for a few minutes and moisten with milk; season with salt, red pepper, nutmeg, thyme, and powdered basil; add the crab meat, and half of its quantity of rice previously boiled in plenty of water, "Creole rice" (No. 1251); fill some clean crab shells with this preparation, until they are quite full and dome-shaped; dredge over with bread-crumbs, besprinkle with butter and brown in a hot oven, or the preparation may be dipped in beaten eggs, rolled in bread-crumbs and fried in hot fat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional kitchen with a standing larder, so quantities are left to judgment. What follows fills in the numbers and the few terms that have shifted since 1894.

Working quantitiesFor six stuffed shells, figure 1 lb picked crab meat, 1 cup cooked rice, a medium onion, 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp rice flour and about 1 cup milk. The binding sauce should be thick enough to hold a dome, closer to a stiff paste than a pouring béchamel.
"Fry colorless"This is the hinge. The onions are sweated in butter over low heat until soft and still pale, and the rice flour is cooked in without taking on color. Any browning at this stage gives the filling a nutty, roux-like flavor that fights the crab.
Rice flourStill sold, and worth using here: it thickens without the pasty note of wheat flour and keeps the sauce white. Cornstarch is a workable substitute at about two-thirds the quantity; wheat flour will need a longer cook to lose its raw taste.
Red pepperCayenne. Start with a scant quarter teaspoon per pound of crab and adjust. The nutmeg should be a bare grating.
Creole riceNo. 1251 is the cross-reference for rice boiled in plenty of water, as this recipe specifies, then drained. Any well-drained long-grain rice cooked that way serves. Use it cold or at least cooled, or it will slump the filling.
The shellsUse the top shells of the crabs, scrubbed and boiled for a few minutes before filling. Cleaned crab backs are sold frozen in some fish markets; 4 oz ramekins or gratin dishes work if you have none.
Oven temperatureA "hot oven" of this period is usually read as somewhere around 425-450F. Ten to fifteen minutes is enough to brown the crumbs and heat the filling through, since everything in the shell is already cooked.
The fried versionIf you take the second option, chill the filling firm before shaping and breading, and fry at 350-375F for two to three minutes. Warm filling will burst the crust.
YieldA pound of crab meat handled this way fills six shells, enough for six as a first course or three as a main with a salad.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole working repertoire of that house. Stuffed crab returned to its own shell is an old idea across the Atlantic world, and Ranhofer's "à la Caroline" label points to the Lowcountry kitchens of Charleston and the Carolina coast, where blue crab was abundant and rice was the regional staple crop. The combination here is telling: a French white sauce base thickened with rice flour, seasoned with cayenne and thyme, and extended with boiled rice — a Charleston dish translated into the grammar of a French kitchen. Rice flour was a natural thickener in a rice-growing economy.