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Crab Meat, White Wine
Place one pound very fresh crab meat in a frying pan with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Pour in a gill white wine, lightly mix, then let cook for ten minutes. Add a half gill milk and half gill cream; mix a little and boil for five minutes. Dilute two egg yolks with two tablespoons cream and add to the crab meat, mix with the wooden spoon while heating but not allowing to boil for three minutes. Pour into a deep dish and serve.
A creamed crab in the French manner, thickened at the end with an egg-yolk liaison rather than flour. The whole dish hinges on the last three minutes.
- The hinge: never boil the yolksOnce the diluted yolks go in, keep the pan below a simmer and stir constantly. At a boil the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks into grains and liquid; there is no recovering it. Pull the pan off the burner if it looks close.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so the wine is 1/2 cup and the milk and cream 1/4 cup each. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne about 1/2 teaspoon noticeably hot; start with half that if you are unsure.
- The crab is already cookedPicked crab meat is normally steamed or boiled before it is picked, so the ten minutes in wine is mainly about seasoning the meat and driving off some of the liquid rather than cooking the crab. Fold rather than stir so the lumps survive.
- "Very fresh"At the time it meant crab picked the same day. Refrigerated pasteurized lump crab is the practical equivalent; drain it well. Avoid canned crab packed in brine here, as the reduced wine concentrates any off flavor.
- Pan choiceA frying pan is right for the reduction but shallow for the liaison. Use a heavy skillet or a wide saucepan; thin metal will scorch the cream and cook the yolks before you can stir.
- The wooden spoon is specified for a reasonThe wooden spoon -- It keeps the sauce moving across the whole pan bottom without shredding the crab. A silicone spatula does the same job.
- Yield and servingOne pound of crab serves three or four as a first course, two as a main. It was meant for a hot deep dish at table; toast points, rice, or puff pastry shells all suit it, and it will not hold or reheat once the yolks are in.
Crab dressed with wine, cream and egg yolks is essentially the classic French liaison finish applied to American shellfish, a treatment common in the international-style cookbooks published in the United States by hotel and restaurant chefs trained in the French repertoire. The nutmeg and cayenne pairing is older than the book: warm spice with rich shellfish sauces runs back through eighteenth-century English and French cookery, where nutmeg was common in cream sauces long before it was chiefly associated with desserts. The insistence on "very fresh" crab reflects the period's limits rather than a flourish, since picked crab meat traveled badly and such dishes were largely confined to cities near the water and to the hotel trade.