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Fried Soft-Shell Crabs on Toast
Remove the spongy parts under the side joints and the aprons from twelve medium, fresh soft-shell crabs. Wash in cold water to entirely free them from sand, drain on a cloth, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, dip in cold milk and lightly roll in flour, then plunge in boiling fat and fry for seven minutes, or until of a nice golden colour. Lift up, drain on a cloth, sprinkle half teaspoon salt over, arrange on six freshly prepared toasts and decorate with six quarters of lemon and a little fried or green parsley.
A straightforward fry that depends almost entirely on how the crabs are cleaned and how briefly they meet the fat. Two points in the original need adjusting for modern practice.
- The "spongy parts" are the gillsLift each pointed side of the top shell and pull out the feathery grey gills beneath. Snip off the face just behind the eyes, and turn the crab over to pull away the apron — the narrow flap in males, the broad rounded one in females. That is the whole of the cleaning.
- Buy them aliveSoft-shells are sold live or cleaned-and-frozen. A live crab should still move when prodded; clean it no more than an hour or two before it goes in the pan. Dead uncleaned soft-shells deteriorate very quickly and should be passed over.
- Seven minutes is too longMedium soft-shells in fat at around 350-365F are generally done in three to four minutes in total, turning them if they are not fully submerged. Seven minutes gives a dark crust and dry, cottony body meat. Judge by colour, as the recipe says, but expect that colour to arrive well before the stated time.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously around what is dropped in — roughly 350–375F. Use enough neutral oil for the crabs to float free, and fry no more than two or three at a time so the temperature holds.
- They spitSoft-shells hold water under the shell and will pop and spatter when they hit the fat. Pat them properly dry after the milk dip, keep a spatter screen to hand, and lower them in claw-side down and away from you.
- Milk and flourThe cold milk dip is only there to make the flour adhere; it is not a batter and should not be thickened. Flour lightly and shake off the excess, or the coating slides away in the fat.
- Fried parsleyDry sprigs dropped into the same fat for 10–15 seconds, then drained. Wet parsley will erupt, so it must be bone dry.
- YieldTwelve crabs on six toasts serves six, two crabs each — a light lunch or a first course rather than a dinner plate.
Soft-shell crabs are ordinary blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) caught in the few hours after moulting, before the new shell hardens, and the American East Coast trade in them grew up around the Chesapeake in the nineteenth century once rail and ice made it possible to move a perishable, briefly available shellfish inland. That seasonality — the runs are generally traced to the warm months, beginning in late spring — is why they appear in hotel and restaurant cookery of the period as a delicacy rather than a staple. Serving them on toast with lemon and fried parsley is a common presentation in the grand-hotel cookery of the era: the toast catches the fat and juices, the lemon cuts them, and the parsley supplies the green note that a plate of uniform golden-brown otherwise lacks. Filippini spent years at Delmonico's, and the dish appears here in this form.