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Scrambled Eggs with Soft-Shell Crabs
Carefully crack eight fresh eggs in a bowl, add half gill cream, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper. Sharply beat with fork one minute. Remove spongy parts under the side points of three medium raw soft shell crabs. Thoroughly wash and drain, remove the small claws, then cut in eight even pieces. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, add the crabs, sprinkle half teaspoon salt over and fry five minutes, lightly tossing meanwhile. Drop in the beaten eggs and cook six minutes, briskly stirring meanwhile. Transfer to a deep dish and serve.
A quick dish that hinges on two things: cleaning the crabs properly and not letting the eggs set hard while the crab cooks. Read the timings as guidance rather than gospel.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup (2 fl oz). That is generous for eight eggs; 2 tablespoons gives a firmer curd if you prefer.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon. Note also that the recipe salts twice, a total of a full teaspoon for eight eggs and three crabs, which is on the heavy side for modern palates.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, wide and shallow with a flat bottom. Any 10-inch skillet works; use nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron, since egg and crab shell together will grab at bare steel.
- Cleaning the crabsThe "spongy parts under the side points" are the gills, exposed by lifting each pointed end of the top shell. Modern practice also removes the apron on the underside and snips off the face behind the eyes, both of which the original leaves in place.
- Cut in eight even piecesAmbiguous in the original. It most likely means eight pieces per crab rather than eight in total, giving bite-sized fragments that cook through in the pan. If you would rather keep the crabs whole, cook them separately and fold them in at the end.
- The timingsFive minutes for cut crab pieces in butter is about right. Six minutes of brisk stirring for the eggs is too long on anything but low heat; over medium heat they will be dry in half that. Pull the pan when the eggs are still glossy and slightly loose, as they carry on setting in a deep dish.
- SourcingSoft-shell blue crabs are sold live or freshly killed and cleaned, mainly in late spring and summer on the US Atlantic coast. Frozen ones work but shed water into the pan; drain them very well or the eggs will weep.
- YieldEight eggs and three crabs serve four as a lunch or supper dish, two as a substantial breakfast. Toast points or a plain buttered muffin suit it, though the recipe specifies nothing beyond serving in a deep dish.
Alexander Filippini, long the chef at Delmonico's in New York, wrote for a readership that took the Atlantic blue crab for granted, and soft-shells appear all through American cookbooks of the period as a spring and summer luxury. A soft-shell is not a species but a stage: the crab has just molted its hard carapace and for several hours, up to about half a day, before the shell hardens, is edible whole, shell and all. Because the window is so short, the trade depended on shedding floats and fast rail shipment from the Chesapeake. Pairing them with scrambled eggs and cream is characteristic of the hotel breakfast and light-supper repertoire of the era, where an expensive seasonal ingredient was stretched across a cheap and forgiving base.