No. 1005

Oyster Crabs Fried a la Newberg or a la Salamander

Crabes d'Huitres Frits a la Newber et a la Salamandre

Oyster crabs are generally found in great quantities the Virginia oysters.

Fried.—Drain and dip the crabs in milk, roll them in cracker-dust, and toss them in a coarse sieve to remove the surplus cracker, then fry them in very hot, fresh lard. Butter some channeled oval tartlet molds three and seven-eighths inches by two and three-eighths inches wide, line them with a very thin puff paste made from parings, and fill up the insides with fine sheets of buttered paper and rice; cook them in a hot oven, empty them well of the paper and rice, and finish by filling them with as many of the fried crabs as they will hold, dress them on folded napkins and serve them while still very hot. The scarcity of these crabs bring their price as high as two dollars and a half a pound.

Oyster Crabs a la Newberg.—Put some oyster crabs in a sautoire with a little butter, salt, and red pepper; toss them well and moisten with a little cream; remove from the fire at the first boil, thicken with raw egg-yolks diluted in cream, pour over a little good Madeira wine and serve.

A la Salamander.—Wash some medium sized prettily shaped deep oyster shells; set them on a very straight baking sheet. Drain very fresh oyster crabs, season them with salt, black and red pepper, and fill the shells full of these; strew over bread-crumbs, and grated parmesan cheese, besprinkle with butter, and brown in a quick oven, serve the shells as soon as they are done. (These crabs should be put in the shells without any sauce.)

← No. 1004 Hard Shell Crabs, Stuffed with Mushrooms and Crabs No. 1006 Soft Shell Crabs, Broiled, Ravigote Butter, →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three preparations of the pea-sized commensal crab that lives inside a living oyster. The hinge in all three is restraint: these are tiny, delicate creatures that cook through in well under a minute, and the Newberg version curdles the moment it boils after the yolks go in.

The crab itselfOyster crabs (Pinnotheres ostreum) live inside the mantle of Eastern oysters and are found only when shucking. They are not sold as a commodity today; if you want them you shuck a great many oysters, or ask a raw bar to save them. Ranhofer's note that they reached two dollars and a half a pound reflects that scarcity.
Cracker-dustFinely crushed dry soda or water crackers, closer to a coarse flour than to panko. Pulse plain saltines in a processor and sift. The toss in a coarse sieve is worth doing: it knocks off loose crumb that would otherwise burn in the fat.
Fry temperature"Very hot, fresh lard" means roughly 375F. At that heat the crabs need about 30 to 45 seconds; they are done when the coating sets and turns pale gold. Any neutral frying fat works, though lard gives the crispness the recipe assumes.
The tartlet moldsFluted oval tartlet molds, the recipe's own measurement being 3 7/8 by 2 3/8 inches; barquette molds are the nearest modern equivalent. The paper and rice are blind-baking weights; parchment and dried beans do the same job. Bake the lined shells in a hot oven, around 400F, until set, remove weights, and dry the interiors a few minutes more.
Sautoire and creamA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow pan, essentially a modern sauté pan. Use it for the Newberg so the cream reduces fast and the crabs are not crowded.
Thickening the NewbergPull the pan off the heat at the first boil, temper the raw yolks with a spoonful of the hot cream, then stir them in off the flame. Returning it to direct heat will scramble the yolks. The Madeira goes in last, uncooked, for aroma.
A quick ovenFor the salamander version, 450F. The gratin is finished in three or four minutes, just long enough to brown the crumbs and Parmesan; longer and the crabs toughen. A broiler set high does the same work faster, which is what a nineteenth-century salamander iron was for.
Serving and yieldA pound of oyster crabs is an enormous quantity by modern standards. Reckon a heaped tablespoon per barquette or shell, and treat any of the three as a first course of two or three pieces per person.

A Little History

Oyster crabs were one of the great luxuries of the American Gilded Age table, and Charles Ranhofer's inclusion of three preparations in The Epicurean (1894) reflects Delmonico's position at the centre of that appetite. The crab is a commensal whose adult female spends her life inside a living oyster, feeding on what the oyster filters, so a bushel of Virginia oysters might yield only a handful, and Ranhofer quotes a price to match. The Newberg treatment ties them to the restaurant's most famous invention, the lobster à la Newberg, which a widely repeated trade anecdote attributes to a customer named Wenberg, and the à la Salamandre name simply denotes finishing under the salamander, the heated iron plate that preceded the overhead broiler. The dish faded with the collapse of the Chesapeake and New York oyster fisheries in the twentieth century; oyster crabs still turn up in shucked oysters today, but rarely in quantities anyone would call a pound.