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Hard Crabs, Mayonnaise
Finely slice a carrot, onion, leek, two branches celery, and place in a saucepan with two branches parsley, one sprig thyme, one sprig marjoram, two dozen allspice, two blades mace, two bay leaves, tablespoon salt, a teaspoon white pepper, gill vinegar and gallon of water, then boil for thirty-five minutes. Plunge in six live crabs and let them boil just ten minutes; take up and let get cold, strip off "dead-men's" fingers, crack claws without breaking open, dress on dish with a folded napkin, decorate all around with thoroughly cleaned and drained lettuce leaves, and send to table with a mayonnaise separately.
This is a court bouillon plus a cold crab platter — the recipe is mostly about the poaching liquid and the picking, not about technique at the stove.
- GillA gill is half a cup, so the vinegar is 4 fl oz in a gallon of water. Cider or white wine vinegar both work; the point is to acidulate the water, not to flavour it strongly.
- Branches and bladesA "branch" of celery is one stalk, a branch of parsley one sprig. A blade of mace is a single piece of the lacy aril around a nutmeg; if you have only ground mace, a scant quarter teaspoon stands in for the two blades.
- Two dozen allspiceWhole allspice berries, not ground. Twenty-four in a gallon is assertive but not overwhelming — the liquid is discarded.
- Boil the aromatics firstThe thirty-five minutes of boiling before the crabs go in builds the flavour of the liquid; with hard shells the seasoning reaches the meat only lightly, so skipping it leaves little behind.
- Which crabs"Hard crabs" almost certainly means hard-shell crabs as distinct from the soft-shells sold in moult; in an American book of this date that most likely means blue crabs. Ten minutes at a full rolling boil suits crabs of about 5–6 inches across; a large Dungeness would need longer than the recipe allows.
- Handling live crabsBuy them alive and lively and cook the same day — a crab that has died in the bag should be discarded, as the flesh breaks down fast. Chilling them in the freezer for 10–15 minutes before they go in makes them sluggish and easier to handle.
- Dead-men's fingersThese are the feathery grey gills under the top shell. They are not poisonous, despite the name and the folklore, but they are unpleasantly spongy and are always removed.
- Cracking without breaking openThe claws are cracked so guests can open them at the table, but kept whole so the platter looks intact. A short sharp tap with the back of a heavy knife, not a mallet, gives the cleanest result.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no number of servings; six crabs makes a modest cold platter, best treated as a first course. The folded napkin under the crabs absorbs drips and stops them sliding; a rack over crushed ice does the same job and keeps them cold on a buffet.
Cold boiled crab with mayonnaise served separately is the classic cold-buffet treatment of shellfish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the method here — a heavily aromatic court bouillon, the shellfish plunged in live, the finished dish arranged on a napkin with lettuce — is straight out of the French service that dominated American hotel and restaurant cooking of the period. Filippini's book gathers dishes from the kitchens he knew at Delmonico's and from the international repertoire fashionable in that world, which is why a Chesapeake staple appears dressed in a Parisian court bouillon. The distinction in the title matters: "hard" crabs are named as such to set them apart from soft-shell crabs, taken just after moulting and eaten whole, which were fried rather than boiled. The mayonnaise is served apart rather than masking the crab in it.