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Crabs (To twelve good heavy crabs)
To twelve good heavy crabs allow half a pint of cream, two tablespoonfuls of flour, the yolks of five hardboiled eggs, a teaspoonful of salt, a tablespoonful of butter, the same of chopped parsley, a teaspoonful of onion juice, and a dash of cayenne. After the crabs have been boiled, open the shells and carefully pick out the meat. The back or upper shell should then be scrubbed clean and dried for stuffing. The sponge fingers should be rejected, also the stomach, and the little twisted intestines found in the center. Put the cream over the fire, rub the butter and flour together, add them to the cream, and stir until smooth and thick. Take the mixture from the fire, and add the hardboiled yolks that have been mashed fine; add all the seasoning to the crab meat, mix carefully with the creamy sauce and fill into the shells, smoothing the edge to the shell so that one can scarcely see the meeting. Cover with egg and bread crumbs. Put them in a frying-basket and plunge into a kettle of smoking hot fat.
This is stuffed deviled crab, and the whole thing turns on the sauce being thick enough to hold the filling together in the shell before it goes into the fat. Everything else is straightforward.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pint of cream is 1 cup. Twelve heavy blue crabs yield roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of picked meat; a pound of good lump crabmeat substitutes directly, though you will then need to buy or save cleaned top shells, or use ramekins.
- "Sponge fingers" are the gillsThe feathery grey-white structures along each side of the body. They, the sand sac behind the eyes, and the coiled gut in the center all come out. Everything else in the body cavity, including the brown fat, is edible and worth keeping.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and use the liquid that collects. A teaspoonful is about what half a small onion gives up. It flavors without adding raw onion texture to the filling.
- Get the sauce stiffOne cup cream to two tablespoons flour plus the five mashed yolks makes a thick, barely pourable sauce. Cook the flour-and-butter paste into the cream for two or three minutes over low heat to lose the raw taste, and if it still slumps, reduce it further. A loose filling will burst the crumb coating in the fryer.
- Frying temperature"Smoking hot fat" is unhelpfully vague and, taken literally, too hot. Use 365-375F. The filling is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust: two to three minutes, until deep gold.
- CoatingBeaten whole egg, thinned with a spoonful of water, then dry fine crumbs. Chill the filled shells for half an hour before breading and again before frying so the filling firms and the coating adheres.
- Shells in hot fatOnly clean, dry, thoroughly scrubbed top shells go in the basket, and only filling-side down at first. A damp shell will spit. Baking at 400F for 15-20 minutes, dotted with butter, is the safer route with a mixed batch of shells.
- YieldTwelve shells, one or two per person as a first course.
Deviled crab in a scrubbed top shell is generally said to have been common along the American seaboard by the end of the nineteenth century, from Chesapeake crab houses down to Tampa and New Orleans, the technique being one of binding picked meat with a thick cream sauce and returning it to its own shell. The "devil" is usually taken to have meant the cayenne and mustard-heat, here reduced to a single dash of cayenne.