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Stuffed Crabs Diable
One pound crab meat, half a pint cold milk, half a gill cream, one-half medium, sound, chopped onion, one-half bean chopped garlic, one teaspoon finely chopped parsley, one ounce butter, one teaspoon English mustard in powder, one-half teaspoon salt, one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, one-half saltspoon cayenne pepper, one-half saltspoon grated nutmeg, three tablespoons flour, two raw egg yolks and two ounces bread crumbs. Place the milk, cream, garlic, parsley, mustard, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and nutmeg in a saucepan, and boil for five minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Place in another saucepan the butter and onion, stir, and let it get a good golden colour, then add the flour; mix well with the wooden spoon. Pour the other preparation into this, mix thoroughly, and then allow to gently simmer for five minutes. Add the two egg yolks, briskly mix till well thickened; add the crab meat, gently mixing for two minutes. Pour it over a flat dish and let get cold. Have six medium-sized, well-cleaned crab shells and equally fill the shells with the preparation. Smooth the surface with the blade of a knife. Equally divide the "devilled butter" on top of the crabs. Spread the bread crumbs over. Pour a very little melted butter over the bread crumbs. Arrange them on a tin pan, and place in the hot oven for ten minutes to bake until they obtain a nice golden colour. Remove from the oven and dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin. Decorate with parsley greens and six quarters of lemons and serve very hot.
A hot crab gratin baked in the shells, built on a thick béchamel bound with yolks. Nearly all of it is straightforward; the archaic measures and the undefined "devilled butter" are the two places to slow down.
- The measuresHalf a pint of milk is one cup; half a gill of cream is about a quarter cup. A saltspoon is usually reckoned a quarter teaspoon, so the cayenne and the nutmeg are about an eighth of a teaspoon each. One ounce of butter is two tablespoons, and two ounces of bread crumbs is roughly a cup of fresh soft crumbs or half that in dry.
- "Half a bean" of garlicA garlic bean is a clove, so this is half a clove for the whole dish — a whisper, not a flavour.
- Devilled butterThe recipe assumes you already have it. Formulas vary, but it is generally softened butter worked with mustard and cayenne and something sharp such as Worcestershire; a few tablespoons of butter so treated will cover six shells. Without it the dish is a plain crab gratin and the name loses its point.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must thicken over gentle heat and never come back to a boil, or it will curdle and weep butter under the crumbs. Pull the pan off the heat, beat the yolks in briskly, then return it only briefly if it needs more body.
- OvenA "hot oven" in books of this date is usually taken as somewhere in the 400–450°F range. Ten minutes is enough because the filling is already cooked and cold — you are only heating it through and browning the crumbs. If the tops are pale at ten minutes, finish under the broiler rather than leaving them in longer.
- The shellsCleaned crab backs are harder to come by now than they once were. Scrub and boil any you have; otherwise use shallow individual gratin dishes or scallop shells, filled to a similar depth.
- Crab meatA pound of picked meat; lump or backfin suits this well. Pasteurised refrigerated crab works, but drain it well — excess liquid will loosen a sauce that needs to hold its shape when spread into the shells.
- Boiling the milk with the seasoningsFive minutes at a boil is to infuse the garlic, parsley and spices, but it will also reduce the cup of milk noticeably. Keep it at a bare simmer and top up with a splash of milk if it tightens before it meets the roux.
- YieldSix filled shells, which is six first courses or three suppers with bread and a salad. The filling can be made a day ahead; chilling it fully is not optional, as the recipe says, because warm filling will not hold a smoothed surface.
"Diable" or "devilled" is English cookery shorthand, attested from the late eighteenth century, for anything sharpened with mustard, cayenne and Worcestershire — the same treatment given to kidneys, bones and whitebait. Stuffed crab baked in the shell is common to several traditions at once: the French *crabe farci* of the Atlantic coast and the Antilles, the Creole stuffed crab of New Orleans, and the English devilled crab of seaside hotels. What marks this particular version as restaurant work rather than domestic is the finish: dressed on a hot dish with a folded napkin, parsley and lemon quarters.