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Soft Shell Crabs, Maryland
Remove the spongy part underneath the side points, and the aprons from twelve fresh medium-sized soft shell crabs. Wash them and drain on a cloth. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, arrange the crabs in it, and briskly fry for four minutes on each side; then pour in half gill sherry, one and a half gills milk and one gill cream, season with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, and let boil for eight minutes. Dilute two egg yolks in a bowl with two tablespoons cream, add them to the crabs, and continually but gently shuffle the pan while heating for three minutes without allowing to boil. Remove, pour them into a chafing dish or in a large soup tureen and serve.
A chafing-dish crab in a sherry-cream sauce finished with egg yolks. The measurements are in gills and saltspoons, and the seasoning is heavier than most palates now want.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 1/2 cup, so this calls for 1/4 cup sherry, 3/4 cup milk and 1/2 cup cream, plus 2 tablespoons cream for the yolks. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- The cayenneTwo saltspoons is roughly 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne for twelve crabs, which reads as fiery today. A quarter of that gives heat without burying the crab, and it can be adjusted at the end.
- Cleaning the crabsThe "spongy part underneath the side points" is the gills, tucked under the pointed edges of the top shell; the "apron" is the flap on the underside. The recipe does not mention it, but the face behind the eyes is usually snipped off as well.
- Buy them aliveSoft shells are sold live and cleaned to order for good reason: they spoil very quickly once dressed. Frozen cleaned crabs work, thawed and patted thoroughly dry so they sear rather than steam.
- More fat, and a bigger panA tablespoon and a half of butter will not carry twelve crabs. Use three or four tablespoons and cook in two batches in a wide skillet, or the crabs stew instead of frying.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, keep the pan below a simmer and move it constantly. At a boil the sauce curdles into scrambled egg in seconds. Three minutes of gentle heat off the direct flame is enough to thicken it.
- Eight minutes of boilingThat stage is there to reduce the milk and cream and to cook the sherry down. Watch it rather than timing it: you want a sauce that coats a spoon, and the crabs are already cooked through by then.
- Yield and serviceTwelve medium crabs serve four as a main course or six as a first course. A tureen is optional; the dish wants toast points or a plain rice to catch the sauce, and it will not hold, so serve it straight from the pan.
Soft shell crabs are blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, taken in the few hours after they shed their old shell and before the new one hardens, which is why they are eaten whole and why the season is short and local. Chesapeake Bay watermen built a whole trade around holding molting crabs in floats until they shed, and the dish as given here is restaurant French of the sort this book speaks: an American ingredient handled with a sherry-and-cream liaison finished with egg yolks, the standard grammar of hotel cookery around 1900. The chafing dish in the last line places it socially as well, since chafing-dish suppers were a fashionable late-evening amusement in that period and shellfish in a rich sauce was their stock in trade. Frying the crabs first and then boiling them in the sauce is older restaurant practice, and the seasoning of cayenne and nutmeg is entirely of its moment.