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Fried Soft Shell Crabs, Devilled
Remove spongy parts under the side points and aprons from twelve fresh soft shell crabs. Wash and thoroughly drain on cloth. Season with one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Evenly spread a devilled butter on both sides of crabs, lightly roll in flour, then place in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat six minutes. Remove, drain on a cloth, dress on hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little fried parsley and six quarters lemon and serve.
A short entry that assumes you already know two things the book explains elsewhere: how to dress a live soft shell crab and what devilled butter is. Both are worth pinning down before the fat goes on.
- Devilled butterIn books of this period it generally means softened butter worked with dry mustard, cayenne, a little Worcestershire or anchovy, and lemon juice; the book's own version is given elsewhere, and the recipe here specifies no quantity. Make it well ahead and chill it so it spreads rather than smears.
- Cleaning the crabsThe "spongy parts under the side points" are the gills; the apron is the flap on the underside. Also snip off the face behind the eyes. Soft shells should be alive until the moment you clean them, and cooked within a few hours of that.
- Boiling fatThe book gives no temperature; for deep frying of this sort somewhere in the region of 350-375F is the usual modern equivalent. Too cool and the flour coating turns greasy.
- Six minutes is too longSix minutes is long -- Three to four minutes will brown the flour and cook a crab through; the full six risks drying the body meat and scorching the legs, depending on the size of the crabs.
- The butter will bleedA buttered crab dropped straight into fat sheds most of the seasoning. Chill the buttered crabs firm, then flour them, and flour a second time if the first coat looks damp.
- Fried parsleyCurly parsley, bone dry, lowered into the fat for ten to fifteen seconds until it stops spitting and turns bright. Wet parsley in hot fat throws violently.
- Yield and serviceTwelve crabs serves six as a main course, two apiece, with the lemon quarters. The folded napkin on the dish both absorbs fat and serves as standard dressing; a rack over a warm plate does the practical part of the job.
Soft shell crabs are blue crabs taken in the few hours after moulting, when the new shell is still parchment-soft and the whole animal can be eaten. The trade was built along the Chesapeake and the New Jersey and Delaware shores, where shedding floats let watermen hold "peelers" until they cast, and the railroads and iced barrels put them on New York and Philadelphia hotel menus through the late nineteenth century. "Devilled" in this period simply meant seasoned hot — mustard and cayenne — and had long been applied to kidneys, bones and biscuits before it reached crabs. The service described here, a folded napkin, fried parsley and lemon quarters, is standard French restaurant dressing of the era.