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Cutlets of Crabs
Heat one ounce butter in a saucepan, add one finely chopped small white onion and gently brown three minutes; add two ounces flour, stir while heating one minute, then pour in one and a half gills cream; sharply mix until it comes to a boil, then add a half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half a bean chopped garlic, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, half teaspoon French mustard, half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg and two egg yolks. Sharply mix with whisk while cooking two minutes. Add then one and a half pounds fresh crab meat flakes, carefully mix with wooden spoon without mashing the meat; heat well two minutes. Transfer the preparation to a dish and let cool off. Then divide in six equal parts, roll out to cutlet-shaped forms, dip in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs, place in a wire frying basket and fry in boiling fat ten minutes. Drain well, arrange on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with parsley greens and serve with one gill of tomato sauce separately.
A stiff cream panade bound with egg yolk, folded with crab and fried as croquettes shaped like small chops. The measures are Delmonico-era and the frying time is the one thing to ignore.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup and the tomato sauce to serve is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- A bean of garlic"Half a bean chopped garlic" means half a clove — roughly a half teaspoon minced. "French mustard" here means a Dijon-style prepared mustard.
- The paste should be very thickTwo ounces of flour (about 1/2 cup) to 3/4 cup cream gives a paste stiff enough to stand a spoon in. That is deliberate: it is the only thing holding the cutlets together, so resist thinning it.
- Chill properly, and that is the hinge"Let cool off" means cold all the way through — spread it in a shallow pan and refrigerate at least two hours, or the shapes will slump and burst in the fat. Chilling again after breading is worth the time.
- Fry three or four minutes, not tenEverything in the mixture is already cooked; the fry is only for the crust. Ten minutes at frying heat will split the crumb coating and turn the crab stringy. At 360-375F they need about three minutes to a deep gold.
- CrabA pound and a half of picked meat is a lot of crab; lump or backfin holds its shape best, and the instruction to use a wooden spoon and not mash it is the difference between cutlets and paste.
- YieldSix large cutlets, enough for six as a first course or three as a main with the tomato sauce and a salad. The folded napkin is a period presentation for fried food — it absorbed drips at table.
Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) came out of a long career at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style plainly: an American shellfish handled by way of the French kitchen. "Cutlets" is a shape, not a cut — croquettes moulded to resemble a small rib chop. The Worcestershire, cayenne and mustard mark the point where the French binding sauce meets Anglo-American taste in seafood, a seasoning trio that runs through devilled crab and crab cakes of the same decades. Frying in a wire basket and serving on a folded napkin with parsley were standard restaurant practice of the period, carried over into a book aimed at ambitious home cooks.